Chapter 19: A Burning Strike
21 BBY, Coruscant
It was not often that Darth Sidious’s plans went awry. After all, he was victorious so long as the war continued, whether the Separatists or the Republic forces won. It was a delicate balance, ensuring that neither side would be winning decisively, but every death and every battle served a purpose, Sidious’s purpose. Every eventuality was accounted for; every path taken would end up with him victorious.
Which was why it was worrying how frequently he found himself having to deal with unforeseen complications as of late, starting from when the ritual within the Sith Shrine had been disturbed, and the many scandals that followed that idiotic Twi’lek Senator crashing his Speeder, while stupidly leaving his Datapad unlocked, one that was filled with evidence of his crimes and that of many senators.
It was surprising how much trouble this single event had caused him, and if Sidious had the time to find a replacement, he would have arranged for his death by now, a very painful one for the many headaches that this had caused him, and that’s aside from the issue entirely.
Some accusations even made their way towards Sidious’s own actions. He had rebuffed them, of course; he had ensured that what little could be tied up to him could be explained as the normal kind of politicking, and that no misdeeds could be truly tracked back to him.
It was Lott Dod’s arrest that truly complicated things, especially his connections to the Separatist movement.
Sidious had ensured his death, of course, and worked with Dooku to move many sensitive projects all over the Outer Rim to avoid them being targeted by the Republic. In fact, they could even use this as a trap against troublesome Jedi, were it not for the fact that someone noticed some of the infrastructure being moved, and ready to be targeted, something that he still had to deal with.
But all of those setbacks aside, the worst of it had to be what occurred recently; a disturbance in the Force that had originated from the temple, where the Jedi’s disgusting Light came forth and began to spread across Coruscant.
It had burned away what remnant of the veil of Darkness that remained in the temple, and in fact, in many ways, it had created a shroud of its own, one of Light, that was slowly shifting the Force all over Coruscant, empowering the Jedi, just as Sidious, himself, had been empowered by the veil of Darkness.
Oh, they remained weak, a shadow of what the Order of the Jedi had once been, but should things continue on this path, they could become more… dangerous. Truthfully, the more concerning part of the incident was that while the darkness of Coruscant, its corruption, greed, and suffering, held back this shroud, the loathsome Light persevered, and was not stifled by it.
That should not have been possible. He and Plagueis often postulated that the Force reflected its surroundings. It was the reason why certain planets drenched in the Dark Side often held more violence, and this theory was proven to be correct as the Clone Wars progressed.
It was a war that spanned across the galaxy, a war that no one truly cared to end; no one truly fought in it, after all. The citizens of the Republic did not enlist to fight, but relied on the clones to do so, clones who were dying en masse alongside the Jedi, all of them against cheap droids. So many deaths in an uncaring population were strengthening the Dark Side all across the galaxy, weakening the Jedi even far away from Coruscant, without them noticing.
The temple, even without the veil of darkness, should not shine with such repulsive Light, and yet it had, and he needed to know why; hence why he had summoned members of the High Council to his office, and he immediately wore the guise of the friendly Chancellor of the Galactic Republic to receive them.
Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and, to his surprise, Anakin Skywalker entered the office. The young knight had likely just returned from his mission, as he had not been on Coruscant during the disturbance. That was a shame, as the boy would likely have told him what he wished, and Sidious would not need to resort to this.
Still, he relished the control that he now held over the Jedi, power that they had allowed him to hold over their weakness. He smiled at them, expertly hiding the sneer that he felt at their presence, as he stood up to greet them, “Ah, Masters Jedi, I am glad to see you having come so promptly.”
Anakin held a wide smile on his face as he said, “It’s very good to see you, Chancellor.”
Sidious offered the boy a smile, maintaining the relationship with the boy that he had cultivated in the last few years. He was his future apprentice, after all. Oh, he would be magnificent when Sidious was done with him.
Mace Windu then spoke up with a neutral tone, blunt as ever, “You did not mention the reason for asking us to meet with you, Chancellor, especially here.”
He was right, in a way. The location (Sidious’s office) was also quite important, instead of one of the many strategy meeting rooms where he normally interacted with the Jedi.
“Ah, yes. I apologise for the vagueness of it all, especially with asking two members of the High Council to come,” Sidious emphasised the number, expecting Anakin to bristle at the reminder of his lesser rank, but he remained strangely calm, “It is something of a sensitive issue that I thought it prudent to speak with you in private. Recent matters shook the Faith of the general public in the Senate, and I have a feeling that this should be handled… discreetly”
All three Jedi frowned at his words, but it was Kenobi who spoke up, “And what issue would that be, Chancellor Palpatine?”
“It would be the fact that many Jedi had been seen in the Senate building, far too many. It had been noticed, and some whisper that this is proof of the Jedi spying on the galaxy’s senators. I understand that there had been a certain… lack of trust, given the recent incident concerning the Senator of Ryloth, but investigating the Senate so openly is quite brazen. After all, this is the job of the Judiciary Department, not that of the Jedi, especially with the ongoing war. I have done my best to reassure the Senators, but there is only so much that I can do.”
Of course, this had been Sidious’s doing, subtly inflaming tensions and rumours, all to pressure the Jedi from deeply investigating the affairs of the Senate. In many ways, the fact that he was warning them in private would cement the idea that they could trust him, that he was on their side and that of the stability of the Republic.
Just as he expected, the Jedi fell to this small manipulation, as Mace Windu said, “We apologise if we might have troubled you, Chancellor, but we were investigating a certain lead. We received some intelligence that one of Count Dooku’s agents was within the Senate, and felt the need to take steps, for the safety of the Senators themselves, of course.”
Oh, what a roundabout way to say that they had sensed the Dark Side in the Senate. This was perhaps one of the Jedi’s greatest weaknesses, their arrogance in thinking that they have mastered the Force, as well as their condescension to those outside of their order.
However, in this case, it was warranted; during the disturbance, Sidious’s Dark Side had lashed out, almost completely out of instinct, against its anathema. It was barely more than a momentary lapse in concentration that he removed by tightening his hold on his Force Concealment. Not many Jedi would have sensed him during the disturbance, but there was no doubt that some could have.
He had known from his informants in the Jedi that they were looking for a Darksider in the Senate. He had taken their words with a grain of salt, since they claimed that the disturbance in the Force had been some kind of technique by the High Council, which he knew was incorrect. Still, he had discovered many Jedi wandering the halls of the Senate in the last few days, likely trying to find him, so their words were likely correct.
Still, Windu’s half-confession was proof that the Jedi still remained blind to the truth, for they obviously trusted Sidious with the partial truth, and thus, did not suspect him to be connected to the Darksider in any way.
In many ways, he could use this. He could make the Jedi make fools of themselves as they chased around a Darksider. He could even use this potential enemy to kill his most troublesome Senators, perhaps even Amidala, eventually. That could be the final step for Anakin to fall to the Dark Side and take Dooku’s place as his apprentice.
But now, he needed to finish the last aspects of his plan, to focus on gaining details on the source of the disturbance in the Force. Without the veil of Darkness to occlude his actions, he needed to be discreet in his investigations.
He would admit to being wary, not because of the Jedi becoming stronger; their power still paled compared to that of the Dark Side, and they remained trapped, just as they had always been, but because of certain words that Darth Plagueis once uttered before Sidious killed him, which continued to ring in his mind.
He had theorised that the Force itself had worked against them, that it created Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, as a reaction to Plagueis’s experiments, and the Sith’s upcoming victory. Sidious had dismissed it then, and instead wished to cultivate young Anakin’s potential as his future apprentice and was on the road to succeeding. And yet now, he had to ask himself if the Force itself had somehow noticed that its champion would fall and thus strengthened the Jedi.
And so, he had devised a ritual, a Sith ritual to be exact, one that even Plagueis would not have noticed, one that the Jedi before him would be accomplices in without their knowledge. He had sensed, briefly, that the Jedi had been affected by this disturbance, growing imperceptibly, and this was something that he could use.
The ritual would subtly latch onto this connection and absorb a small aspect of it. The Sith ritual itself would take place elsewhere, far away in the lower levels of Coruscant, far away from the Jedi. It was an idea that was inspired by his projection’s battle in the Sith Shrine, specifically seeing his loathsome enemy absorb his Force Lightning using Sith Runes. The Dark Side would eventually be traced down, but he would have gotten irrefutable evidence that he was not the source of the Dark Side in the Senate.
Unfortunately, subtlety necessitated sacrifice, and in this case, the ritual itself was quite slow, which meant that he needed to pass the time. And so, he answered the Jedi, “Such information is quite worrying, but I only have so much control over the Senate and faith in the Jedi has been shaken since the mission to Mustafar.”
This time, the Jedi seemed uncomfortable with his answer, which made sense as they had failed the Republic greatly, and more importantly, the mission that he had assigned to them. He did not care much regarding the droid factories, and neither did the public. Instead, they focused on the lost chemical weapon and the Jedi’s failure at securing it.
Swamp gas was a weapon that Sidious wished to unleash on Naboo eventually to wipe out the Gungan population. Its loss had been annoying, as he had planned on enhancing it with Sith Alchemy later, and had planned for either side to maintain a sample of the prototype. After all, he commanded both the Separatists and the Republic.
Sidious used the opportunity to chip away more of the Jedi’s image in the eyes of the public; he had ensured that this particular failure would haunt the order, that the Jedi had failed to secure a weapon that could kill millions.
The thoughts of the Dark Lord of the Sith were interrupted as he felt that the ritual was finished, and images began to assault his mind far more violently than they should have.
He quickly recognised what he saw, for it was familiar. Specifically, it was the Sith Shrine, which had been beneath the Jedi Temple, that he and Plagueis had repaired and used their ritual to weaken the Jedi and cloud their sight with the Dark Side, blinding them until their timely end.
And yet, now it was completely changed, for even the blackened stone that had been infused with the Dark Side for thousands of years had turned grey, and the Force Nexus that they had built their ritual on was radiating the revolting Light that now remained within the Jedi Temple.
Still, this was not supposed to happen, not at all. A Force Nexus should not shift its alignment so quickly, especially in a world entrenched in Darkness. There was no doubt that someone had actively done this, someone had somehow undone years of planning, and actively endangered the Grand Plan, someone dangerous…
Then it appeared, a familiar creature that made him want to sneer, though he controlled himself. It did not look as if it was one of flesh and blood, but he recognised it all the same, the bird… Potter’s bird.
How he hoped he could fry that creature with his Force Lightning.
The bird seemed to radiate amusement and mockery and dove down towards him in the image in his mind, radiating amusement and mockery, ending the images that the ritual sent him.
When Sidious’s senses returned, and he found himself stumbling in his office forward for just a moment, with Anakin immediately moving to help him, “Are you well, Chancellor?”
Halfway through his stumble, Sidious realised that his control almost slipped, but he tightened his hold on his Force Concealment even further, stopping it and sensed that no trace of the ritual or the Dark Side. His ritual had worked, just as he had expected, just as he had planned, though the images had been more intense.
And so, he quickly righted himself up, giving his future apprentice a grateful smile, “I’m afraid that I haven’t eaten much of anything this morning. I will be fine, my friend.”
Though calm he might have appeared to the Jedi, in the privacy of his mind, Sidious seethed.
He should have felt exhilarated by the fact that three Jedi had participated in a Sith ritual without realising it, two of whom were members of their High Council. It was proof of their weakness, and Sidious’s mastery over the Dark Side. However, he was mainly enraged by the involvement of Harry Potter. His damnable bird, too.
There was only a single man who had achieved feats in the Force that he had not thought possible before, feats with means that he did not understand, and that was Harry Potter. When they had faced one another, he had covered himself with a cloak, but it did not take him long for the disguise to be useless, given how eye-catching that bird was. In many ways, while he hated that creature greatly, he was grateful for it, for it had allowed him to easily narrow down the opponents that had fought against his projection and stopped his ritual.
He had put a bounty on his head mostly with the aim of inconveniencing him. Sidious did not think that someone with a mastery over the Force like Potter would fall to mere bounty hunters, and if he had, then he was unworthy of Sidious’s attention in the first place.
But this… this was proof that Potter was more than a momentary irritant, and that was something that he could not allow.
Still, as Sidious righted himself up in Anakin’s grip and reined back his senses, he instinctively found himself sensing his presence and almost stumbled once more.
Previously, Anakin Skywalker had been a mass of suppressed anger and hate, with pressure points that he had cultivated, each one with a certain purpose. He held a distrust of the Jedi since his mother’s death, a fear over the many dangers that Padme Amidala found herself in, as well as rage at Dooku. It had been some of Sidious’s finest work, to keep all of it contained, cultivated, ready to erupt at the proper moment.
And yet, the young man that he looked at, for this moment, held a calmness that had not been there previously. There was still anger and fear beneath the surface, but it was not as Sidious had planned for it long ago; the careful pressure points were missing, as if it had all been… spent. Sidious did his best to hide his shock at what he had felt, for the change that Anakin Skywalker had exhibited had been unlike anything that he had ever seen before, especially so suddenly.
To think that just before the battle of Quell, things had seemed similar.
No, it was not the battle of Quell that had caused this. It was Maridun, where Anakin had spent time with Harry Potter.
This man… once more. He had destroyed years of progress with his future apprentice, his enforcer of his orders when his empire inevitably rose.
This was more than a simple irritant. This was an enemy revealing himself, one that strengthened Sidious’s enemies, that stole his apprentice, that was obviously powerful in the Force.
This was a rival, one that Sidious’s apprentice failed to find, that the countless Bounty Hunters across the skies could not trace.
It seemed that the threat that Potter represented was one that Sidious would need to handle… personally.
Despite himself, he felt a small smile grow on his face at the thought. After all, it had been some time since something had warranted his personal attention.
In the meantime, he turned to the worried Jedi and said, “I apologise for this moment of weakness, and let us not speak of past unpleasantness, and focus on the future. We need to win back the favour of the public, and I wanted your opinion on a plan that I have been considering for some time.”
Even as the Jedi accepted his words and turned their attention towards his proposal, Sidious's mind remained elsewhere. Harry Potter had made his move, and now it was Sidious's turn to respond.
AN: I had a lot of fun writing this chapter. As I said before, I’m still getting the hang of writing a Star Wars story, so bear with me if anything feels off.
As for this chapter, it was mostly meant to be Sidious’s reaction at the disturbance, trying to analyse it down with the Jedi’s eyes on the Senate and the Temple, and to Harry’s little neener-neener that he left him. I thought that it was in character for Sidious to perform a Sith ritual in front of the Jedi without them noticing, even though there were probably better ways to do it, but I wanted your thoughts on that.
As usual, I don’t mind rewriting this chapter depending on your feedback, so please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.