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Kenobi gently smiles at him from the front page of the morning’s holopaper.
The Negotiator Brings Dark Prince Fearuhsum to the Table, the headline beneath the picture reads.
The Dark Prince Fearuhsum has never once in his very long lifespan ever agreed to truce talks, which is precisely why Darth Sidious had worked tirelessly behind the scenes for months to ensure that the Senate would vote that securing his allegiance was a galactic priority and that requesting Obi-Wan Kenobi to head the treacherous talks was their best option.
And when he inevitably failed, he would be hailed a hero of the Republic. The funeral was going to be a stately affair, made open to public through the Supreme Chancellor’s insistence, paid for by the generous coffers of the Galactic Senate. It was going to be something gaudy and elaborate, something that any Jedi would find uncomfortable.
Sidious had even found himself daydreaming during long, arduous meetings about which music accompaniments he would request be played at Kenobi’s funeral, and now—
The Jedi Master’s eyes twinkle up at him from the flimsi page, and there’s something unbearably smug about his expression.
It makes his teeth grind together, and he barely resists the urge to reduce the holopaper to ash through precise application of Force lightning. But the smell of burning flimsi would almost certainly alert his secretary, and there are only so many candle-related fires he can explain away as meditation accidents before the girl starts spreading rumors that he’s an old man addled by age and unfit for leadership.
Which would probably please Kenobi to no end, to see him removed from office. At this point, Sidious can’t be sure that Kenobi himself isn’t some other Sith lord in disguise, carefully laying machinations of darkness around the galaxy and biding his time before he can claim ultimate power for himself. Power that was meant to be Sidious’ alone.
“Darbeka,” Sidious says into the comm connecting his office to the secretary’s desk outside his doors. “Cancel my meetings for the morning. I have been alerted to an urgent matter that requires my full attention.”
There’s a second’s long staticky pause before Darbeka replies in the affirmative with the voice of someone who has just been casually asked to move mountains. On the whole, she’s incredibly competent, though Sidious hungers for the near future when his every command will be obeyed with nothing more than a Yes, Emperor.
He gives the holopaper one last disgusted look before he leaves it on his desk, facedown, and goes to the windows on the opposite side of his office instead.
Kenobi’s smug smirk haunts his every step.
The truth of the matter is that Kenobi won’t die.
This is both grudgingly admirable and deeply inconvenient for Darth Sidious, who has in the past twelve years come to realize that much of his preferred course of action and future galactic Imperial plans rely on Kenobi’s death.
His death or his complete and total abandonment of Anakin Skywalker, which seems…unlikely if even half the things the boy has told him about his former master have been true.
And yet. The man will not die, no matter how many bounty hunters Sidious pays to bring him his head, no matter how many battle plans he sabotages, no matter how much time Sidious spends in his office with the lights off, bargaining with the Force.
So as unlikely as it sounds for Obi-Wan Kenobi to willingly turn his back on his former padawan, that reality is fast becoming the only viable option if Sidious truly wants to progress with his plans to secure Anakin Skywalker’s power beneath his thumb in order to wield it as his own.
On flimsi-paper, it looks easy enough really, should Obi-Wan Kenobi be a normal Jedi Master.
After all, Anakin Skywalker is most certainly a failure of a Jedi, one who has taken the sacred vows of the Jedi Order—and everything Kenobi stands for—only to betray them time and time again. Any fondness the Master holds for his erstwhile apprentice would almost certainly buckle under the weight of Skywalker’s betrayals should such betrayals come to light.
Perhaps the marriage could be excused as a youthful folly, but the massacre of the Tuskens in the wake of Skywalker’s mother’s passing would surely turn the stomach of any proper Jedi.
And yet, still, Sidious has his doubts. All of his sources tell him the same thing: that Kenobi is devoted to the boy. He is known to dote on Skywalker, push the very bounds of reason and obstinacy when the boy is under question from the Jedi Council. Protect him beyond reason in a physical altercation as well as in a verbal one.
The only saving grace of the situation is that Skywalker seems almost wholly unaware of Kenobi’s transgressions against his Order in Skywalker’s name. Instead, he oscillates wildy between somehow expecting Kenobi’s loyalty in every regard—almost as a husband would—and insisting to Sidious for the better part of any given afternoon tea appointment that he neither has it nor particularly wants it.
For the past several years, Sidious has worked with careful precision to drive a wedge between Skywalker and Kenobi by feeding upon Skywalker’s insecurities and angers towards his master. His efforts appear to be working, however slowly. Skywalker has begun to schedule more and more appointments with Sidious when on Coruscant in between missions. He confides in him about his love, his wife. Things he cannot tell Kenobi because he knows that Kenobi would not understand.
But for every scheduled tea break that Skywalker requests through Darbeka, Kenobi manipulates their warfront deployments so as to spend whole campaigns at his former padawan’s side.
It is a terribly arduous task, to try and subtly convince Skywalker that his master does not care for him when the man spends seemingly every other day throwing himself in front of blaster shots in defense of his Jedi padawan.
All the while not even having the kriffing courtesy to die while doing so.
Sidious makes himself take a deep breath and turn away from the window, lacing his fingers together in front of him as he indulges in his anger and draws power from it.
The truth of the matter is that Obi-Wan Kenobi will not die, so he must be convinced instead to willingly turn his back on his pupil if Sidious is ever going to tempt Skywalker into Falling.
Yet despite what Skywalker seems to believe, he has Kenobi’s devotion. And perhaps, perhaps, the revelations of Anakin’s crimes and betrayals would be enough to temporarily shock Kenobi into abandoning his padawan for a short period of time—for truly, Skywalker is a tumultuous enough individual that all Sidious really needs is, at most, a handful of days to trigger his Fall—but even that would be difficult to arrange.
After all, Sidious has spent the past several years cementing in Skywalker’s head that Kenobi cannot be trusted with his secrets. That revealing them to him would mean the end of life as he knows it. How can he possibly convince him to confess to them now? In such a way that would leave Sidious blameless?
It would take a truth serum of incredible strength to loosen Skywalker’s tongue, and that isn’t—
Sidious pauses, hands loosening to fall limply at his sides as his mind stops like it’s skidding over a precipice before beginning to run even faster than before.
Durasteel-grade truth serum isn’t something that most people have access to.
But Darth Sidious, Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, is not just anyone.
It would indubitably loosen Skywalker’s tongue. There are strands of veritarian plants that have been specifically developed to pry one’s most heavily guarded secrets from their lips. There are truth powders so potent that they’ve been banned throughout the Republic. There are even stronger strains that are still used in secret and in shadow by Coruscanti police to extract confessions out of would-be criminals, and he knows that several Senators have already petitioned his office for permission to use them on their planets as well.
Getting a dose of the specific strain of truth serum that would have Anakin Skywalker look into Obi-Wan Kenobi’s eyes and confess to marrying a woman after murdering an entire village of Tuskens on his homeplanet….It would be child’s play, really.
Ensuring that the dosage gets to Skywalker and that he ingests it would be perhaps more difficult, especially considering that Kenobi’s whereabouts should also be factored into the plan. After all, he’d have to be planetside and relatively close by for Skywalker to run to him and confess his sins.
It would be…tricky, yes. Especially to hide his own involvement.
The ideal scenario would be that Skywalker ingests a dosage without realizing what it is he’s just taken and who has given it to him. Surely there are strands of the serum that alter the taker’s perception of time and events, that make them think they’re sharing their secrets of their own volition. If Skywalker and Kenobi both believe that his guilty conscience sparked his confession, they wouldn’t look any further into it.
Especially not in light of the information Skywalker would share.
And though it would be tricky, difficult does not mean impossible.
After all, he is Darth Sidious, the most powerful Sith in galactic history, currently Supreme Chancellor of a crumbling Republic that will become his bountiful Empire. He can force-feed one singular Jedi Knight a small dosage of truth serum.
With a flick of his fingers, the holopaper on his desk floats up to his face. The image of Kenobi’s smug smile greets him immediately.
For the first time in a while, Sidious smirks back.
Sidious has no expectations that his first attempt to drug Skywalker with a truth serum will bear fruit. It is less of a concerted effort and more akin to dropping a rock from the edge of a cliff to calculate how long it takes to fall.
He sends the boy a box of chocolates from an anonymous admirer. They’re Skywalker’s favorite flavor and favorite brand, from a small shop nestled into the Middle Rows district. Darbeka had reported no trouble finding it at all.
Though Skywalker is old enough by now to know better than to eat food—even familiar food—from an unknown donor, especially given his newfound wartime fame that has thrust him into the public eye, Sidious thinks that perhaps his impulse control will be low enough to fail completely in the face of his favorite delicacy.
So he sends the chocolates, along with a note ostensibly written by a little boy who so greatly admires Skywalker’s bravery and fighting skills, and waits in carefully couched anticipation for their scheduled afternoon tea two days later.
But the Skywalker that appears in his office, almost ten minutes late and looking inappropriately windswept, is not the Skywalker he’d expect to see should the Jedi Knight have confessed his darkest secrets to his former Master and been summarily banished from his presence.
If anything, Skywalker looks more content than normal, limbs and robes askew in what could be considered a charmingly boyish fashion if Sidious could find it in himself to view any aspect of Skywalker’s personality or, indeed, his very existence charming.
It takes twenty-three agonizing minutes of casual conversation before Sidious can steer the appointment in the direction he wants it to go.
“I imagine that one misses the comforts of their home when forced to sleep so roughly on the warfront, in between battles and the like,” Sidious says carefully, clinking his spoon against the side of his teacup before setting it aside on the small saucer. “The luxuries of your wife’s apartments must feel strange to you now on the days you are able to spend your time there.”
“Oh, uh,” Skywalker blushes and averts his eyes. Despite his age and his responsibilities, he inevitably turns into a child the moment that Sidious mentions Senator Amidala. “Yeah. I really…the pillows are nice.”
“Quite,” Sidious replies, raising his cup to his lips to hide the automatic downward turn of his lips. One day, when he is Emperor and Skywalker is nothing but a source of conductive power for his whims, this will have been worth it. This all will have been worth it. “I hope you have been taking advantage of the access you’ve been granted to the delicacies of Naboo that I’ve heard the senator keeps on hand.”
Skywalker’s face has morphed into a rather worrying shade of burgundy. “Uh—”
It will be worth it. One day. One day very soon, this will be worth it. “The culinary delicacies of Naboo, I should say. You must know our candied fruits and blue-milk chocolates are the envy of the Mid-Rim—and I don’t say that lightly, my boy.”
“Oh!” Skywalker puts the teacup down hard enough that some of the liquid splashes out over its rim. “Right, yeah. I, um. They’re really good. The pears too. Padmé keeps a lot of pears on hand. That I…have access to.”
“Certainly far better a taste than the ration bars they serve the troops at the warfront, yes?” Sidious prompts, feeling rather like he’s ushering Skywalker towards a metaphorical cliff’s edge that he wouldn’t necessarily mind being physical.
“Yeah, definitely,” Skywalker agrees, eyes wandering over the walls of Sidious’ office and tone growing distant. “Not a lot of Nabooian, uh. Delicacies on the warfront. But we make do.”
His cheeks redden again, thoughts parsecs away in a place or memory that Sidious decides he'd would rather not know about.
And yet, he forces himself to continue the conversation when Skywalker makes no move to elaborate or change the topic himself. “Oh?” he asks, thinking that pulling teeth would be less trying.
Skywalker’s eyes slide back into focus and he picks up his teacup again to take far too big of a sip to be polite. “Obi-Wan cooks for me when he can,” Skywalker explains softly, like even the words are a gift that must be handled with extreme care.
Sidious pushes away the dish of biscuits he’d just drawn nearer, appetite suddenly diminished. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” Skywalker says with the smallest of smiles, rubbing his fingers over the desk’s edge. “Beans on toasted bread, that kind of thing.”
“Beans on toast,” Sidious hears himself repeat.
Now, he’s never really considered himself a patriot of Naboo, despite being its Senator and at times publicly declaring his allegiance and willingness to put his life on the line for the planet.
But even he finds himself the slightest bit offended on behalf of his homeplanet at the fact that Anakin Skywalker looks far happier recalling a meal of flavorless beans on a soggy piece of bread than he did when talking about the chocolate candied pears of Naboo.
“Oh, but I got chocolates in the mail the other day,” Skywalker says casually, and Sidious has to control the sudden urge to jump to his feet in celebration. That would be too obvious. Even for present company.
“From Naboo?” he asks instead, even though he knows for a fact that the chocolates were crafted in the Inner Rim salted-toffee style preferred by the inhabitants of the Stewjoni Planetary district, as is Skywalker's preference.
“Maybe, yeah,” Anakin says, running a hand through his hair, before shrugging. “I don’t know, I didn’t get a good look at them. They were sent anonymously, by some child on Coruscant judging by the handwriting of the note. Master Obi-Wan thought maybe they were from a senator’s son or daughter.”
“Really? How sweet. I imagine they must have saved their pocket money to buy you a gift. Did they taste on par with…beans and toast?”
“Oh, well,” now Anakin looks sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck and glancing at Sidious and then away again. “You know Master Obi-Wan doesn’t really trust politicians.”
Sidious blinks.
“And he said, you know, it would be far too dangerous to actually eat anything sent through the mail, especially anything sent anonymously. So he binned them for me.”
“He binned them for you,” Sidious repeats. Of course Kenobi did. Of course he did.
It’s fine. This is fine, he reminds himself. After all, Sidious had been prepared for this first attempt to fail, had thought it was both an improbably long-shot and incredibly unlikely to work. He’d even decided that he wouldn’t hold this first failed drugging against Skywalker, in the near future when he had the power to punish Skywalker for his many and varied failures and inconveniences.
Yet now that he knows that Kenobi was involved, the plan has not failed. It has been thwarted.
And Sidious is livid. He hides his thinned lips behind the rim of his teacup, before he sets it down again, eyebrows furrowing as if an incredibly distressing thought has just occurred to him. “But you said they were addressed to you, my boy. Surely your former Master trusts your judgement in matters as…inconsequential as chocolates from a fan? If he does not, how could you believe that he trusts your judgement in more serious affairs?”
Skywalker blinks as if he hasn’t thought about it, which would be rather par for the course. But the consideration in his eyes doesn’t linger the way it did so many years ago, when Sidious first began planting doubts about his master in the boy’s mind.
He does not stand or grow incensed either, the way he does when Sidious reminds him of how little the Jedi Council believes in him. Instead, he takes his teaspoon and swirls it around his cup as if in deep thought, before he shrugs and gives Sidious a boyish smile. “He looks out for me,” Skywalker says.
Sidious gets a strange and unignorable feeling that the words mean something completely different for Skywalker than they do for anyone else.
It’s, unquestionably, a bad feeling.
If Darbeka finds it strange that a plain-clothed civilian has an urgent, off-the-books meeting with the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, she’s a good enough secretary not to mention it. Instead, she just shows the quiet woman into Sidious’ office and ensures that the door closes fully on her way out.
“Well?” Sidious asks, the moment that they’re alone. He has been on edge waiting for this debriefing since this morning.
The woman bows deeply, tucking her hands behind her back as she looks at him dully from across the room.
The unfortunate side effect of holding a Force-null civilian under prolonged Force suggestion for too long—in this case more than half a day—is that it tends to blunt the mind and slow down a person’s natural reactions.
Direct commands yield results, but Sidious’ patience has already been tested thoroughly today from both his job in the Senate and his work as a Sith lord.
“Speak,” he snaps, standing from his desk. “Did Skywalker ingest the serum I gave you?”
The woman pauses. She’s still wearing her uniform from the caf-shop, which is not a surprise. Sidious had demanded she come to him the moment she closed her shop for the day.
Her shop, situated a convenient ten minutes away from the grounds of the Jedi Temple and thirty minutes away from the Upper Levels gardens where Anakin Skywalker enjoys running laps on his days on-planet.
Her shop, that Anakin Skywalker has frequented every week for the past several years. Always on a Taungsday, and always for the same order of two boonaberry muffins and one cup of milky caf.
It had been a stroke of genius to visit the establishment himself first thing this morning and give the woman a bottled dosage of truth serum to slip into Skywalker’s drink. After all, the rapport has already been established between the shop owner and the Jedi Knight, so it’s not as if Skywalker would be watching her make his drink with a discerning eye.
Her mental defenses had been laughably easy to tear through, but then she was a Force-null human. It was the work of a minute to access her mind and give her a series of heavy Force suggestions to follow.
“Well?” He prompts when she does not give him an affirmative answer.
“No, my lord,” she says. “He did not ingest the dosage.”
Sidious keeps his gaze pinned on the city-planet’s horizon, afraid that if he looks at her he may accidentally kill her, and while Darbeka is proving to be a wonderful secretary, a dead civilian may be a bit too much for even her.
“Tell me what happened,” he commands, enunciating every word carefully.
“Knight Skywalker did not enter the shop alone,” the woman relays. “Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi accompanied him, and both ordered milky cafs over ice. I poured the vial into Skywalker’s cup, but the serum affected the color of the drink. Master Kenobi thought that I had accidentally used bunka-nut milk instead of blue milk. Because Knight Skywalker has a severe allergy to bunka-nuts, Master Kenobi insisted I remake the drink just to be careful. I was only given one vial of the truth serum by yourself, my Lord. When I remade the drink to Master Kenobi’s preferences, I had nothing left to put into Knight Skywalker’s second caf.”
Kenobi.
Sidious closes his eyes and reaches into the well of his wrath for comfort and the familiar embrace of his own power. It soothes him to think that in a fight of sheer strength, Sidious would pulverize Kenobi in a heartbeat.
Picturing that gives Sidious the temporary peace of mind needed to turn and face the woman. “Is that all that happened?” he asks measuredly.
“No,” the woman drones, dazed eyes flicking around his office like she’s both content to stand here and wondering where she is.
“Oh?”
“Master Kenobi left a sizable tip in exchange for the inconvenience of remaking Knight Skywalker’s caf,” she says. She pauses, thinks on the significance of this for a moment before she adds, “I like Master Kenobi.”
“Get out.”
Pulverised veritarian plant root sprinkled over Skywalker’s robes yields no results—apparently, Kenobi sends them to the wash immediately, assuming that the small specks of white along the dark fabric are mildew spores from Skywalker’s last mission to some backwater Outer Rim planet.
A strong Force suggestion placed on the mind of a food vendor manning a market stall outside the weekly Garden District’s morning market, that Skywalker is known to routinely visit, results in a vat’s worth of truth serum mixed into a large, boiling pot of munakko stew. It also results in four marriages ending, seven crimes being confessed to, and twelve physical alterations erupting between dosed victims within the span of four hours. Skywalker, who had apparently been eyeing the stew, had been talked out of purchasing a bowl for himself by Kenobi, who worried about him spoiling his appetite for their latemeal. Instead, both Skywalker and Kenobi personally broke apart nine of the twelve fights, with the only bright spot being the moment that an angry civilian managed to clip Kenobi across the cheek with the flat of her palm.
Pastries snuck into Skywalker’s quarters, this time with a note identifying the sender as a well-known senator hailing from a planet that Skywalker recently saved, yields similar results. This effort though had involved enough public politicking on Sidious’ end—planting the idea of sending Skywalker the treats into the senator’s ear, procuring the correct Temple clearance for the gift and then visiting the senator’s apartments personally so as to tamper with them before the senator mailed them—that after two weeks had gone by with no distraught, golden-eyed Anakin Skywalker appearing in his office, he’d felt the obligation to ask after the sweets.
“Oh,” Skywalker says, face flushing a deep red as his hands fumble the teacup. “You, uh—you directed the senator to send them to, um, my quarters? At the Temple?”
“Yes,” Sidious replies, teeth grinding together to the point of pain. “I was hardly going to direct him to send the pastries to your secret wife’s apartments.”
Anakin blinks.
“My dear boy,” Sidious adds, before taking a fortifying sip of tea. “Besides, I was under the impression that our senator was on Naboo at the moment, visiting with her family during the Senate’s recess. I assumed you would be in the Temple, in your assigned quarters, given that you are on leave.”
“Oh, yeah,” Skywalker says. He sets his teacup down, and rubs his palms over his thighs as he clears his throat. “I guess I’ve been staying with Obi-Wan. Recently.”
“Obi-Wan.”
“He never moved out of the quarters I used to live in,” Skywalker snaps, sounding half embarrassed and half defensive. “That was my home first. The room’s still empty. And he has no interest in moving anyway, and definitely no interest in another padawan, so—I can stay over whenever I want. Especially cause Ahsoka’s out with Plo Koon’s troops at the moment to practice her spoken Friunian. So, yeah. I mean, maybe I haven’t been—I don’t like sleeping alone—in empty quarters. Obviously I like sleeping alone in my bed. Or—when my, er, wife can’t be there. Obviously I like sleeping with her best. To sleep! Beside her. Right.”
Sidious folds his hands in his lap and carefully decides against attempting to process Skywalker’s deluge of, ostensibly, words. “Am I to understand that you did not realize that the senator from Beesam sent you a dozen pastries from Coruscant’s finest bakery because…you have not stepped foot in your own quarters in the last two weeks? And are instead…temporarily living with your former Jedi Master again?”
“Uh, temporarily, yeah,” Anakin agrees with a wince. He slouches further down into his seat, mouth bending into a frown. “They’ll have gone stale now too,” he says, a hint of a whine in his voice. He tips his head back to rest against the back of the chair as he glares up at the ceiling, sulking. “Master Obi-Wan will have me write a thank-you flimsi note anyway, even if I have to toss them all.”
With great precision, Sidious folds his hands in his lap and manipulates the Force into triggering his datapaad’s alarm. “Oh dear,” he says woodenly. “It appears I have an urgent appointment I simply must attend to. You may show yourself out, dear boy, I trust?”
Skywalker is examining one of the marble stone busts that line the far wall of Sidious’ office. The tea trays have been delivered and plated to perfection for their appointment. All that’s left is to pour the drink and call Anakin over to the small table where they usually retire for tea. With a deft twist of his wrist, Sidious uncorks the vial in his hand and pours the truth serum into Skywalker’s cup.
“You prefer a dash of milk, do you not?” he asks the boy, serving himself a cup before pouring the rest of the small pot into Anakin’s teacup, over the viscous, cream-colored serum.
“Only a little,” Skywalker says, moving to take his accustomed seat just as Sidious sets down the pot of tea. “That looks good.”
Sidious doesn’t even bother to hide his smile as he pours himself a cup. “Excellent,” he says. “Do drink up. This is a new blend, one that I’ve never tried before. An admirer gifted it to me recently.”
Skywalker makes a noise that is ostensibly meant to convey his interest in the topic but only manages to express his utter boredom with it.
This is fine. After all, it is not Skywalker’s diplomatic prowess that Sidious seeks to control and wield by fashioning him into his apprentice.
The important thing is that Skywalker takes the teacup laced with truth serum and downs half of it immediately.
Across the table, Sidious lets out a breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding and sinks back into his chair, absently taking a sip from his own teacup. The fact of the matter is that Sidious had always considered himself a patient man. And up until these last two months of his life, he thinks that holds true on the whole. But, really, there are only so many times that a man can fail to drug another man before the failures begin to chafe. He hadn’t wanted to be involved so obviously in ensuring Skywalker ingested the truth serum, but he has been left with no other choice.
If one wants something done right, one must simply do it himself.
“So tell me, my dear boy,” Sidious says carefully, placing his teacup on the saucer and making an exaggerated face of consideration at the aroma of the spice blend, as if it isn’t what he’s expecting. As if there’s something slightly off about it.
After all, the only way for this ruse to work is if Anakin believes that they both have been dosed with truth serum, some powder-varient that Sidious’ ‘admirer’ has snuck into their gift. If Sidious is a victim as well, Skywalker will not even think to consider him a suspect.
“How do you like the tea?”
Anakin says easily, “I hate it.”
They blink at each other for a second, in a rare moment of true camaraderie, both startled by Skywalker’s admission. “Oh,” Sidious replies. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
The words make Skywalker blanch and he quickly drinks another gulp of his tea, as if that will somehow erase the memory of the last minute. “No, I mean—I hate all tea. This isn’t special.”
Sidious opens and closes his mouth, unable to decide what he should say in response. Does he point out that this is the third time this month Anakin Skywalker has come to his office for light meals and conversation over tea? Does he remind him of the various times over the last many, many years that Skywalker has come to Sidious’ office for the express purpose of drinking tea?
And—not special? Has Skywalker forgotten that Sidious is, in fact, the Chancellor of the Galactic Republic? That thousands of sentients would kill to have his time and ear the way Skywalker does?
But before he can choose how to respond, the boy is clapping a horrified hand over his own mouth. “I don’t know why I said that!”
“Is it true?” Sidious asks snidely, momentarily unable to control himself. Skywalker must be contagious.
“Yes!” Skywalker says immediately, sounding more frenzied now. At this latest truth, he jumps to his feet. “I wanted to say no just then! But it’s like I couldn’t!”
His Force signature thrashes around him, calm blue waters whipped suddenly into a stormy and treacherous ocean. Sidious adopts a very confused and concerned grandfatherly countenance, standing as well and reaching a hand across the table towards the distressed boy. “What do you mean, you couldn’t?”
“I—I don’t know!” Skywalker says, hands flying through the air. “But with the tea, I—I’ve always hated tea, I just know you like it and so I drink it when I’m here even though it tastes horrible and you always oversteep it, which makes it taste worse, and oh Force, I’m so sorry, Chancellor, I don’t know what’s wrong with me—”
Sidious tucks his hands into the sleeves of his robes and tries not to feel stung.
Oversteeped?
“Hm,” he says, crossing his office to pick up the packaging of the “gift” from his “admirer”. He makes a show of examining the foil, though when he glances at the Jedi Knight from the corner of his eyes, it’s to find that Skywalker’s attention has been thoroughly captured by his self-assigned task of angrily pacing the floor.
“Ask me something, dear boy,” he says, clearing his throat and repeating his request when Skywalker doesn’t seem to hear him. But then, the serum only forces one to tell the truth. They still have not invented a drug that makes one obey commands or show respect for one’s betters, though Sidious is hard at work on it.
“What do you think is going on?” Skywalker snaps out, turning to face him with his hands running through his hair. “The Force feels off, Chancellor. Like there’s danger lurking nearby.”
“I think we both may have ingested a rare strain of drug produced from the veritarian plant,” Sidious says, rounding out his syllables and quickening his speech to imitate the way that Skywalker had so promptly answered his first question.
“A drug? What does it do?”
“Why, it forces the user to speak the truth, of course,” Sidious lies. “I thought the tea blend tasted strange. Though, I suppose all tea tastes unpleasant to you, Anakin?”
“No,” Anakin says with a vaguely horrified look in his eyes. “Obi-Wan’s tea is good.”
Sidious has to carefully put down the foil wrapping in his hands and sink down to sit behind his desk slowly. It’s either that or resort to incredible violence.
“Oh?” he says warmly and full of grandfatherly fondness. “I can’t be offended,” —which is another lie— “I suppose I will have to ask for his tea blend if I want you to truly enjoy our talks. What do you like about the mix?”
“I don’t like it all,” Skywalker says. “Please stop asking me questions, sir. We need to figure out—”
“I’ve figured it out,” Sidious corrects, far too harshly. Perhaps he is a little more stung than he originally calculated. Though, it is one thing if Skywalker does not appreciate a cup of tea. It is a wholly other thing if Obi-Wan karking Kenobi is involved. “Obviously my admirer snuck a truth serum drug into their gift for me, as I am a high-profile politician and spend quite a lot of my time telling half-truths and circumstantial truths to irrelevant parties. We are both under the effects of this very unfortunate drug. Now what do you mean you don’t like it at all?”
Skywalker’s jaw works furiously as he, Sidious assumes, tries to physically hold the words back. But after so many failed attempts to get the dose into Skywalker’s system, he’d made sure that the vial he tipped into his tea this afternoon was the strongest strain available.
“I hate every single tea-blend I’ve ever tried, but I’d drink poison if he asked me to and enjoy the kriffing taste,” Skywalker says, words pulled from his mouth like they physically hurt. His face is several shades paler and there’s sweat beading along his hairline, as if the serum and its effects are making him ill.
Sidious thinks he quite understands that feeling, and he opens his mouth to say something—anything—that will send Skywalker on his way, back to Kenobi so he can confess all the ways he’s betrayed the man that he apparently loves so much—
But Skywalker isn’t finished apparently, because he adds in a very high-pitched and horrified voice, “And he always makes a cup of tea to soothe his throat after he sucks me off, so I’ve developed a positive association with the smell, oh Force, Chancellor, I didn’t mean to say that.”
“I…” Sidious can feel his mouth hanging open like a desert-world dunce, but he doesn’t think he’d be able to close it if he were offered the throne to a galactic Empire right now.
Skywalker, for his part, looks as if he is going to faint, and his eyes begin to flick back and forth between Sidious and the door. Though if he’s thinking of beating a tactical retreat or finding someone to help Sidious through what is surely the first stages of a heart attack, Sidious can’t be sure.
The threat of losing Skywalker before Sidious can learn everything he apparently needs to know about these new developments forces him to pull himself together, though those terrible and unfortunate words are still knocking about in his brain.
“Does…does your wife know about this, Anakin?” he asks, sounding faint even to his own ears.
The boy looks miserable as he sits down in the chair opposite Sidious’ desk with one last longing look at the office door. But the truth serum’s pull is too strong for the silence to last long: “I don’t have a wife,” he says, looking close to tears.
“I’m sorry?”
“I never married Senator Amidala,” Skywalker tells him, peering up at him through his eyelashes to gauge his reaction. “We reconnected when I was assigned to guard her, but our relationship didn’t survive far past Geonosis. Obi-Wan found out and discouraged me from pursuing the senator, returning with me to Naboo to wrap up the mission.”
Sidious tries to think of anything he can say to salvage what has become an absolute wreck of a situation. But all he can come up with is, “I don’t understand.”
“You were so certain our love story was romantic and strong enough to survive anything,” Skywalker mumbles, twisting his fingers into knots in his lap. “I’d told you we planned to marry before Obi-Wan found out about the whole thing, and then I just…I didn’t want to tell you that it didn’t even survive its conception. You were so happy for me.”
Oh, so this is his fault now.
Sidious closes his eyes and gives into the urge to pinch at the bridge of his nose. He thinks it’s an acceptable show of ire, given that what he really wants to do is send bolts of lightning through the boy until he stops twitching.
“And…when did you…with Master Kenobi…?”
When Sidious looks at Skywalker, the boy’s face has flushed from pale white to dark, plum red. “The night we got back from Naboo,” he confesses. “Obi-Wan was lecturing me about—about how my Knighting ceremony would be the next day and after that he wouldn’t be able to follow behind me and clean up my messes, so I would need to learn how to control my impulses without him there. And I kissed him.”
Sidious closes his eyes again. “And in doing so, demonstrated a wonderful level of impulse control, I imagine.”
“That’s what Master Obi-Wan said,” Skywalker says with a slight chuff of laughter, as if anything about this situation is remotely amusing. Sidious thinks he’s going to be ill.
“And then?”
“Well,” the word is drawn out for several beats, and when Sidious dares to glance at Skywalker again, he’s staring fixedly out the window, furiously blushing. “He kissed me back.”
“The war began two years ago.”
“...and then we got married, with two of our commanders as witnesses, after we survived our first siege together.”
Sidious takes a very deep breath and then lets it go in increments. Perhaps he should take up meditation. Perhaps he should refocus his attention on Count Dooku as his apprentice.
Surely Count Dooku has not secretly married Obi-Wan Kenobi while promising him that he’s very much in love with his wife, the senator from Naboo.
“Please don’t be too terribly mad,” Sidious hears Skywalker say, voice wobbling. “I’m sorry I lied. I just—Obi-Wan said no one could know, and I agreed that absolute secrecy was for the best! And, it’s not like I’m not married at all, right? I’m just married to Obi-Wan instead of Padmé! I love him, I do. He’s good to me, and he makes me happy, and—”
Skywalker falls quiet when Sidious holds up a hand, which honestly feels like the least he can do now that he’s created rubble out of years of planning. Not only is Amidala not the key to Skywalker’s heart as he’d sworn she was. Not only does Skywalker have at least three supporters of his secret marriage within the Jedi army. Not only is Skywalker’s secret love affair with his former Jedi Master, who he views as a bastion of goodness and wisdom.
Not only that, all of that, but it is Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“I worry for you, Anakin,” Sidious grits out between his teeth as he folds his hands in front of him on the desk. “Senator Amidala was there for you in one of your darkest moments, and that was a part of the reason I so approved of your match. But does your master—does your husband know…about the Tuskens?”
Skywalker blinks, as if the question has momentarily confused him. “Oh,” he says, and his eyes drop down to his lap, fingers twisting and knotting around each other once more. “Yeah. I…I told him. He was upset. I’ve—I’ve actually never seen him so upset. But I promised that I’d talk to someone about it, Grandmaster Yoda or a mind healer or both if he just stayed with me, and he…he said that he made a promise to me ages ago that he wouldn’t leave me alone in the Dark. And he didn’t plan on breaking it now.”
Anakin’s smile is sickeningly soft and boyish when he glances up at Sidious, and his Force signature stills in the air around him, as if the very thought of Kenobi has brought him some sort of inner peace.
“He actually spoke to the officiant at our wedding and changed his vows to include that too. Isn’t that sweet?”
“Terribly so,” Sidious replies with the closest thing he can manage to a smile. "Truthfully."