Archive of Our Own ^beta

"In their defence," Quinlan said, consideringly, "they were being primed to accept autocratic takeover for years. Those are often violent, you know."

"They rarely involve someone being beheaded on the floor of the Senate, however." Satine was making a more valiant effort than Quinlan had to keep a straight face. She was not entirely succeeding.

The newly-minted Galactic Emperor put his head down on his desk, and considered weeping. He had been quite prepared to die, either facing the Sith Lord or as punishment for his heroics, which might never be fully understood. Instead, by the end of the day, the Senate had proclaimed him Chancellor, passed the law that had apparently been simply sitting on the backburner to make the Chancellor their new Emperor, and been on their merry way. He assumed they were all off somewhere together, laughing at his expense.

Obi-Wan might have laughed too, if not for the other thing. "Cody." There was no response. "Commander Cody." He was so rigid. Even as Quinlan had thrown himself across a sofa and Satine helped herself to another, curling her feet up under her, he still stood there, perfectly expressionless. "Please sit down, CC-2224."

He moved like a marionette, just as Palpatine had ordained it. A galactic emperor needed an army to enforce his will, after all.

"I'm sorry," Satine said, even though she really didn't need to apologize. "It isn't funny. But it's so bizarre and so existentially awful that I don't really know what else to do." She turned to look directly at Cody, who was carefully watching the door, still on guard duty. "If you can hear us in there, Commander, trust that we will do everything in our power to help you and your siblings."

He gave no more response to her than he had to Obi-Wan.

--

Being Galactic Emperor should, in Obi-Wan's humble opinion, have primarily involved delegating. Some people were happy to allow him to do as much. Half the Jedi Council, for instance, were either on Kamino or rifling through Palpatine's things, trying to solve all the mysteries he'd left behind. Others were remarkably unwilling to do any such thing.

"I would help you if I could," Bail apologized, "but the people of Alderaan would never endorse a galactic empire if they had any other choice, and I am their Senator."

"Could you at least organize a rebellion to overthrow me?"

With a twinkle in his eye, Bail promised to do his best. Cody, standing by the door, had a hand to the blaster at his hip, even after Bail left.

"He has the right of it," Obi-Wan told him. "A galactic emperor is hardly the type of person to respect. Nobody should want to be associated with me now. It's mad that half of them do."

That half were impossible to delegate things to on account of their madness, authoritarian sympathies, and/or grift.

Then, of course, there were things that could not be delegated. Cody was one. He had been the first clone to be affected by this plague Palpatine had released just before his death, shooting once wildly at Obi-Wan and Palpatine as they fought on the floor of the Senate before subsiding into dull obedience on Palpatine's death, awaiting further commands that Obi-Wan did not know the activation codes for. Obi-Wan was keeping him close, partially because he was hoping it might wear off in time, and partially because he seemed to be more badly affected than many others, who mostly seemed to be going about the daily routines of life, just stripped of their regular personalities. He certainly was not doing it, as Quinlan had suggested, to punish himself for not having killed Palpatine more quickly by a few minutes. Or by a few years.

Anakin, who likewise could not be delegated, was the reason Obi-Wan was increasingly convinced it should have been years. His breakdown in the aftermath of Palpatine's death hadn't been as dramatic as the clones', if only because he was still able to communicate his feelings, but the scope of those feelings was so extreme it was difficult to be around at times.

There were few things worse, Obi-Wan thought, than to realize that one of the only people you had ever trusted – and it was becoming increasingly clear that Anakin had trusted Palpatine more than Obi-Wan himself – had been actively engaged in trying to make a slave of you and all your friends. The Council had pulled him off active duty in the same meeting where they'd kicked Obi-Wan out of the order for becoming a dictator, and assigned a mind-healer. Unfortunately, the mind healer seemed to still be in the 'dredge up traumas that will be important to address' stage of the process. Or maybe it was just that seeing the clones moving around like droids every day opened things up again.

"Maybe you should just use your evil powers," Anakin suggested darkly. "Dooku's retreating, but we could hunt him, make him pay. Or you could declare war on the Hutts. Now would be the time, if there's ever going to be one."

"I wouldn't send them into war like this, even if there was a good reason to have one. Which there isn't."

Anakin released a wave of darkness into the Force that made Obi-Wan feel for a moment like turning and jumping directly out the nearest window. The stillness it left behind wasn't much better, though at least Anakin sounded more like himself, resigned and a little frustrated with Obi-Wan, but affectionate too. "I know, Master. You wouldn't know what to do with an army without Cody telling you."

"Too true," Obi-Wan said, and looked back at Cody in the hopes that he'd know the words were meant for him too.

--

"I am all too aware of your likely answer," Count Dooku said, in a grave tone that was somewhat undermined by the fact that Obi-Wan had set the holoprojection to miniature mode and left him a four-inch-high figure standing on Obi-Wan's desk. "Yet I feel it would be remiss if I did not invite you to enjoy the fruits of your triumph. You have great strength already, but there is much yet for you to learn about the true ways of the Force, and about ruling others with it."

"My empire is going much better than yours," Obi-Wan pointed out. "How many worlds have defected to the Neutral Systems since you declared the Confederacy was now a Sith Empire? I've nearly lost count."

Obi-Wan had been trying to encourage parts of his own empire to defect to Satine's coalition as well, thus far with little success. He had been hoping that if enough of them defected they might simply declare their own Republic, to which Obi-Wan could then surrender.

Dooku looked as if he'd just discovered the wine he was swirling in his tiny glass had turned to vinegar. "You remain insolent, I see."

"You really should have learned that about me by now."

Cody would have found this very funny. He wouldn't have laughed in the moment, wouldn't even have tilted his head, but Obi-Wan would have felt the bemusement in the Force, warm with affection. And maybe later, when they were alone and well away from danger he would have called Obi-Wan an idiot for taunting a Sith, but in the Force he would still have been laughing.

Cody, standing at the door, felt like nothing at all, nothing but a droid…

A droid and a hint of darkness, that was.

"What was Palpatine's plan anyway?" Obi-Wan asked. "The war to consolidate power certainly, to predispose the populace to support ever-increasing authoritarian measures, but why a clone army? Why not droids for both sides? It would surely have been cheaper."

"Have you ever tried to command an army of droids?" Dooku snarked, long-suffering. "Trust me when I say my regrettably late Master gave you the better end of the deal."

Having fought that army, Obi-Wan was inclined to agree. Which of course raised the question. "Why did you agree to fight a war your master must have intended you to lose?"

The miniature Dooku on the desk looked despicably smug. "His intentions don't seem to have come to fruition."

Obi-Wan's estimation of Dooku's intellect wasn't nearly as high as Dooku's own thinking on the subject would have demanded, but he hardly thought the man foolish enough to bet his life on Obi-Wan strolling into the senate and beheading the Lord of the Sith. If he had, he might have tried more frequently to ensure that the Jedi knew who they were supposed to be fighting.

"Or the plan was always for you to lose. The plan required you to lose, in fact. Or for Count Dooku to lose, rather, and Darth Tyrannis – that is the name, isn't it? – to emerge victorious as the heir to a Sith Empire. There must have been something you could secure that way that you could not secure by having us kill Palpatine and seizing power for yourself." And what would the greatest threat to a Sith Empire be? What was the greatest threat now, as the Shadows tore through his plans and Jedi diplomats went to entice Separatist worlds to free themselves from their newfound subjugation? "You needed him to destroy us even more than you needed us to destroy him, and he had a plan by which to accomplish that aim."

A plan, perhaps, that had seen the creation of an army, the insinuation of that army into the very heart of the Jedi – the very hearts of many Jedi – and had destroyed them.

"This 'droid mode' Palpatine activated as he died – would I be wrong to say that he aimed to do something else? Perhaps to enact a last vengeance upon me and my kind? A vengeance that you and he collaborated in orchestrating from the beginning of the GAR's inception?"

The little blue Dooku smiled. "Well done, my dear apprentice. You begin already to uncover the mysteries of the Sith. But there is more yet that I could teach you – much more – if you came to my side."

"I'll consider that," Obi-Wan lied, and ended the call, disappearing Dooku just as anger began to crack that polite mask.

To Cody he said, "he already failed in whatever he was trying to do. It is the way of the Sith to fail, in the end, martyrs to their own wicked ambitions. I promise you will not be the same."

--

"I don't want to know how you got in here," he told Ahsoka, who was sitting on the Chancellor's desk – the Emperor's desk – with her legs crossed under her. She'd put down her datapad when he came into the office.

"Bribed your secretary," she answered, even though he really hadn't wanted to know. "Authoritarian states really are corrupt, huh? I could have been trying to kill you!"

"You don't want to be Emperor next," Obi-Wan warned her, and called his chair over with the Force. "But really, it's best not to be associated with me at the moment. My fall from power is going to be catastrophic and glorious."

"Your approval rating is seventy-five percent," Ahsoka pointed out.

"And that will be going down," Obi-Wan pleaded with the Force, even as Ahsoka smirked at him. "Please take a seat, CC-2224. There's no need for you to be on guard duty with Ahsoka present."

"Hey Cody," Ahsoka said dutifully. She still sounded cheerful, but a trace of sadness had slipped through in the Force about her. Hers wasn't a furious grief, like Anakin's. It was more like Obi-Wan's own, an emptiness in the face of an awfulness too large and interwoven to imagine.

Obi-Wan reminded her, "you don't need to grieve alone, even though Anakin can't help you right now. Knight Secura would happily share a meditation with you on this, as would many others. No Jedi needs to carry this alone."

"I know," Ahsoka said simply. "I was with Barriss before. We meditated on what happened, and on the people we missed. And it made me think I missed you too, even though you're still here."

At the moment, this was a feeling with which Obi-Wan felt profoundly familiar.

--

It was Anakin who worked it out, in the end. Obi-Wan was trying a new strategy of making sure both him and Cody ate when all three of them were in the office together, because he'd found that Cody was more able to act independently when someone else was there to mirror, and Anakin seemed reassured by the confirmation that he could do something to help, even if it was a small thing.

"And then Dooku called me his 'dear apprentice,'" Obi-Wan finished with a flourish. "Which I must say was exceptionally presumptuous. And somewhat insulting, when you consider what low standards he must think I have."

Anakin had stopped, grubsticks hanging in the air with noodles dangling aimlessly. Cody had stopped moving too.

"I'm sorry," Obi-Wan said, "I suppose it isn't terribly funny, is it?"

"It's funny," Anakin disagreed. "Dooku's an idiot. But are you saying you think him and Palpatine were involved in creating the clones? I thought that was Master Sifo-Dyas?"

Anakin was presumably not being allowed into Jedi meetings on the subject and, unlike Obi-Wan, didn't now command a vast intelligence network that could tell him what was going on in those meetings whether he was invited or not.

"We always knew there was something suspicious," Obi-Wan reminded him. "Why was their template someone who hated the Jedi? Hells, we knew Fett was working for Dooku back then. What if Fett was working for Dooku in this too? What if Fett understood this as part of his vendetta against the Jedi? It's vulgar, I admit, to sell your own children for an army, but-"

"It's not uncommon to sell your children," Anakin interrupted. "Most people who do it just don't have a choice. But Fett was a bounty hunter; he'd have seen it before."

Obi-Wan had been thinking of him as a Mandalorian, of course, had been thinking of Satine taking her baby nephew in when she was barely an adult herself. But Anakin was right too. Jango Fett might once have believed in high virtues, but in the end, those had faltered in the face of whatever it was he could get from the Sith.

"I'm sorry you've seen it before."

Anakin shrugged. "I knew mom would never have given me up if I was hers to give. Maybe to Qui-Gon if I'd really wanted to go, but never for her. I saw it happen though. That's what I was thinking about earlier, actually. The Hutts couldn't compel people like this, but a bomb chip in you works just the same."

"Not a collar?"

Anakin shook his head. "Ugly and overkill. You don't need a whole big thing when a little card smaller than a credit chip somewhere sensitive will do the trick. Heart, brain, you know." He made an explosion gesture with his hands. "Sorry, I know it's gross, Master, but I really feel like I should keep talking about this."

Obi-Wan really wasn't sure what to make of this mind healer's methods. "Anything you need to talk about, Anakin, disturbing though it might be. Would you like to release this into the Force together?"

Anakin shook his head. "No, I mean, I think it's coming out of the Force. I just feel like there's something right on the tip of my tongue. There has been since you told me about your conversation with Dooku. I just have to get there. Dooku. Evil Sith slavery plot. People selling their children. Bomb chips-"

Cody dropped his grubsticks, perhaps because Anakin had set his down as he talked. Or perhaps because, just for a moment, he'd exercised an act of will. Or perhaps because the Force had exercised one through him.

"Gotta go," Anakin said, and bolted.

--

"You know," Obi-Wan said to Fox, "if you assassinated me, this could be your Empire. It's really just ready for the taking."

He looked duly horrified by the prospect. What a sensible man. "I don't want your job, Sir. I want mine back. Cody's a good vod, but he wouldn't know Pantoran punch from Plutarian poison."

Cody's recovery was taking longer than most. Apparently, he'd managed to damage his brain around the chip fighting it that first day, and had required secondary surgery. Obi-Wan, who was still barred from the Jedi Temple due to his authoritarian ways, got at least four updates a day from Ahsoka and Anakin.

"You're still head of the Coruscant Guard," Obi-Wan assured him. "You can even have a promotion, if you'd like. How would you feel about being…"

"His Most Admirable Highness General Fox?" Fox suggested. "I'd rather quit, Sir."

Obi-Wan had been going to suggest something more reasonable, if only he'd remembered what non-military security ranks on Coruscant actually were. "Well, you can be called whatever you'd like, within reason, and as I said the Guard is yours, but… I'm Cody's, until he decides otherwise."

"Maybe you should promote him to the title of Empress," Fox suggested, and ducked out before Obi-Wan could formulate a proper response.

--

There was a moment, when Cody stood in the doorway of the Chancellor's office, his hand trembling slightly as Anakin had mentioned it now sometimes did, where Obi-Wan almost ordered him to come in and sit as he would have all those weeks ago. Luckily, he stopped himself in time, though he felt the blood rise to his cheeks with the embarrassment of it.

Cody smiled at him. "Get up, General."

"Nobody's called me that in quite some time," Obi-Wan pointed out, but did as he was asked.

"Obi-Wan, then," Cody said. It was probably one of the first times he'd called him that with an open door. "Come here." Obi-Wan followed that order too until they were standing no more than a few inches apart and Cody continued, "you've spent too long on your own in here. You're coming with me to see the rest of the 212th."

"I wasn't alone here."

"You made sure I wasn't alone," Cody argued, "but you still were, in all the ways that mattered. When you needed me. Let me fix it now?"

It would surely be conduct very unbecoming of an emperor to kiss the head of his personal guard in the halls of the Senate. Perhaps, if he repeated it enough times, someone would find reason to depose him.