Machinations of the Sith (Star Wars)

Happy Star Wars day everyone! I still can't believe this is a thing that I actually wrote, but people on the discord seemed to want it, and I'm a sucker for "the bad guys win" storylines, so here we go...

Of course all this madness would happen while Anakin’s halfway across the galaxy and completely out of contact, Obi-Wan Kenobi mused to himself, his thoughts laced with the sardonic humour he had become somewhat famous for among the Jedi. Indeed, how typical was it that his former padawan should miss this dramatic rescue attempt of the Republic’s Supreme Chancellor from the Separatists because he had been handpicked for a top secret mission by that very same man!

Daring rescues and adventures of the sort were much more Anakin’s speed - Obi-Wan preferred a more diplomatic approach himself - but the Jedi were stretched impossibly thin thanks to the widespread nature of the Clone Wars. Thus, the responsibility of heading the rescue attempt had fallen onto Obi-Wan’s shoulders alone and although he had a number of Jedi assisting him as part of the operation, their main goal was keeping the Separatists distracted so that he could sneak aboard the enemy ship and free the Chancellor from captivity.

There was a surprising lack of resistance once Obi-Wan had made it onto the Separatist ship. He knew from scouting reports that it was Count Dooku’s personal vessel and yet it didn’t seem to be all that heavily fortified. The Jedi Master had sliced his way through several squadrons of battle droids but there were none of the heavy hitters to be seen, and an uneasy feeling settled in the back of his mind. There’s more going on here than it seems, he surmised, recognising the erratic spikes within his connection to the Force to be an indication that something was amiss.

It didn’t take long for Obi-Wan to locate the Chancellor; Dooku had his captive imprisoned in a large viewing platform on the top deck of the ship. Chancellor Palpatine was constrained to a chair via magnetic bonds around his wrists and ankles and guarded only by Count Dooku himself. It wasn’t the first time Kenobi had reunited with Dooku after their initial duel on Geonosis and in their following encounters he had come to expect the Count to both play dirty and flee when the fight wasn’t going his way. In most of those conflicts Obi-Wan at least had Anakin by his side, but this time he’d be going solo. Time to prove why you earned the rank of Master, old man, he teased himself, dropping down into the room from a ceiling vent.

“Ah, Kenobi! I wondered when I’d be seeing you,” Count Dooku exclaimed, the corners of his thin lips turning up into a proud smirk. “Although it seems you’re lacking your guard dog. Trouble in paradise?”

“Your arrogance will be your undoing, Count,” Obi-Wan scoffed in response. “I don’t need Anakin here to take you on. Need I remind you who’s responsible for defeating your predecessor?” As he spoke, Obi-Wan summoned the lightsaber from his belt and activated it with a flourish, bathing the room in a bright blue light that was quickly joined by the vibrant red of Dooku’s own weapon.

The fight that followed was fast and ferocious, as was wanton to happen during any collision between the Jedi and the Sith. Obi-Wan and Dooku exchanged periods of offense and defense during the dangerous dance that was lightsaber combat, until Dooku used one of his underhanded tactics to blast the Jedi Master across the room and send his lightsaber out of his hands.

With his opponent temporarily down, Dooku rounded on his prisoner. “I grow tired of this,” he declared suddenly, “And you have outlived your usefulness, Chancellor.” The Sith Lord raised his crimson lightsaber, preparing to take a swing that would surely decapitate the Chancellor and single-handedly send the Galactic Republic into absolute chaos. Obi-Wan had only a split second to react and although the action brought him no great joy, he knew there was only one thing he could possibly do to save the Chancellor’s life.

Obi-Wan grimaced at the gasp of pain that escaped Dooku’s lips once the Jedi’s lightsaber had pierced directly through the Count’s torso. The Jedi Master closed his eyes for a brief moment, made a prayer to the Force that it might forgive him for taking another life, then removed his blade from Dooku to allow the Sith’s body to drop down to its knees and then crash onto the floor. Revealed behind it was the smiling face of Chancellor Palpatine.

“You did what needed to be done to save my life, Master Jedi, and for that I thank you,” Palpatine declared, his gaze only briefly dropping down to regard Dooku’s corpse with a look of disgust. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d very much like to be free of these bonds.”

Obi-Wan’s dealings with Chancellor Palpatine had been sparse at best. They had first met during the Trade Federation’s invasion of Naboo, and although the fallout of the event saw Obi-Wan taking Anakin on as his apprentice, the young boy had also found something of a father figure in Palpatine too. It wasn’t a friendship Obi-Wan exactly condoned - the Jedi were supposed to be devoid of emotional attachments, after all - but thanks to Anakin’s endlessly stubborn nature it was hardly something he could completely forbid. On the whole, with perhaps the exception of Senator Padmé Amidala, Obi-Wan had no great love for politicians. The political sphere was as much of a battlefield as the conflicts on Naboo and Geonosis had been, only politicians were much more duplicitous than the average warrior. As the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, Palpatine held the most power out of any of them, and the collection of power by a single individual was always going to make Obi-Wan suspicious, no matter how noble they declared their intentions to be.

Still, Obi-Wan and the Jedi were in service of the Republic, and rescuing Palpatine had been his assigned mission, so the Jedi Master quickly removed the bonds tying the Chancellor to the chair and helped the older man onto his feet. He was about to explain the escape plan he had coordinated with his Jedi colleagues when Palpatine raised a hand and the calm melody of the Force became a sudden screech of alarm. The reason for such a dramatic shift was immediately clear: Palpatine was harnessing the dark side of the Force and had used it to trap the unsuspecting Jedi Master in enforced physical stasis. Try as he might, Obi-Wan’s body was completely locked up, like he was little more than a lifesize doll.

A wave of dark understanding washed over his mind. The Chancellor is the Sith Lord we’ve been hunting for, he realised in abject horror. How could we have not sensed this sooner? He must be more powerful than any of us ever imagined. The Jedi had learned to dispel fear, but it was fruitless to suggest that Obi-Wan was completely calm, given he was at the mercy of one of the most powerful Force-users in the whole galaxy. It seemed depressingly likely that he wouldn’t be making it off of the ship alive. But why reveal himself now? And why have Dooku sacrifice himself to get me in this situation?

“You are about to do me a great service, Master Kenobi,” the Chancellor remarked, his true insidious nature dripping from every word. There was a snakelike quality to him with his beady eyes and gaunt face, and he circled the frozen Obi-Wan like a predator taunting its prey. “It’s an unfortunate truth that the Dark Side of the Force has a negative effect on the physical form. While I’m limited to this body, my powers will only continue to destroy it from within until I’m too crippled to oversee my grand vision for the galaxy. That, Master Jedi, is why I plan to continue on my legacy inside your body.”

Such a thing isn’t possible, not even through the Force! The unfortunate truth though was that there was still so much about the Force that no Jedi knew, especially when it came to the depths of the Dark Side. Obi-Wan looked internally in a desperate attempt to strengthen his own connection to the Force in an attempt to defend himself, but he could already feel the corrupted tentacles of the Dark Side curling around him and crumbling his mind’s fortifications.

“Don’t get me wrong, Kenobi, you are not my endgame,” Palpatine continued as he smoothed down a crease in the Jedi Master’s robe, an action that felt severely sinister despite its unremarkableness. “No, that has always been dear Anakin. He is, after all, the Chosen One, but your body - your identity - will help me bring Skywalker to the Dark Side where he belongs.” The threat of what Palpatine planned to do to Anakin awoke a fire within Obi-Wan but no matter how hard he fought back, he simply couldn’t break the Sith Lord’s invisible grip upon him.

Palpatine stepped in close until there were a mere few inches between their faces and in doing so allowed Obi-Wan to see the slight red ring around the Chancellor’s pupils as well as the subtle yellowing of his teeth. His skin was of a sickly pallor too and the lines of age appeared dramatically more prominent than they had the last time Obi-Wan had been in the other man’s presence. “Just between you and me though, I’m going to enjoy being young and handsome again,” the Sith Lord drawled, running a bony finger along Obi-Wan’s cheek and lips. The cold touch would have sent a shiver down Obi-Wan’s spine if he’d still had the ability to move but instead it made his insides squirm as if there was a creature crawling beneath his skin.

“Thank you for your sacrifice, Master Jedi,” Palpatine spat out as he placed his hands on either side of Obi-Wan’s skull and closed his eyes. Within moments the Jedi could feel the invasive force of the Dark Side breaking down his final defenses and entering his mind. No, not entering - emptying. His entire being was being sucked down a garbage chute in excruciating, like the roots of an ancient tree being pulled up to make room for some industrial monstrosity.

Even as he was being pulled out of his body, he could feel the void left behind being immediately filled by the dark presence that was Palpatine. Their consciousnesses crossed for the briefest of moments and Obi-Wan received a disturbing flash of the other man’s life - the history of how Darth Sidious had come to be and everything he planned to do - that left him utterly terrified for the future of the gallery. Even more concerning was that the tiny moment of crossover had allowed Palpatine to copy over Obi-Wan’s own memories, allowing him to perfectly pass under the guise of the identity he was in the process of stealing.

The process itself might have only lasted a few seconds but to Obi-Wan it felt like a lifetime of agony. He was left with the most severe case of exhaustion he had ever experienced; his body felt like it was about to fall apart. No, not his body, but rather the body he now occupied. The body of Sheev Palpatine, the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and secretly the Dark Lord of the Sith. A small mercy came when Obi-Wan discovered he had recovered the ability to move but the hope that sprung from the revelation lasted mere seconds before he was hit by a cascade of Force Lightning that sent him crumbling to the ground where he writhed in anguish.

After almost twenty seconds of consistent torture, the torment stopped. “Now, I can’t exactly have you babbling to everyone about what I’ve done here, can I?” Palpatine taunted from above the fallen Jedi Master. Hearing his own voice twisted with such gleeful cruelty was enough to make Obi-Wan’s heart skip a beat. Between the pain caused by the consciousness exchange and the bout of Force Lightning that had followed he felt like he was on the edge of breaking. How much could this body still handle? Apparently he wasn’t the only one wondering as such. “Killing you would be the easy out, but I can think of something a little more fun.”

Rather than elaborate, he simply let forth another round of Force Lightning to utterly ravage the elderly body he had left behind. “Instead I think I’ll leave you as a mere shell of what you once were - a husk, still alive and but unable to communicate with the world around you. So far gone you won’t even be able to communicate with the Force anymore. I want you to bear witness to my ultimate triumph, after all.”

The next spell of Force Lightning had Obi-Wan smelling burning flesh, but Palpatine still wasn’t done inflicting physical, emotional and mental pain upon him. “I’ll tell the galaxy that this is how I found you - that I killed Dooku in revenge for what he had done to the dear old Chancellor. It will only be a matter of time before I make my way back into the political sphere, but until then I have plenty of puppets I can use to get my way, all while I craft Skywalker into my perfect little soldier.” He broke off to let out a maniacal cackle, all while his hands continued to crackle with lightning. “Now that I think about it, Emperor Kenobi has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

As his damaged body was impacted by the fourth stretch of lightning torture the real Obi-Wan Kenobi slipped into a darkness he would never fully recover from. As the Dark Lord of the Sith promised, he remained alive but was unable to alert anyone about his evil replacement and instead had to watch as the galaxy entered into a dark age of terror, with the newly christened Darth Vader falling right into step behind the dreaded Emperor Kenobi. For a whole millenia nobody would ever know the truth about what had really happened on that ship, and the history books would forever list Obi-Wan Kenobi as the man who brought about the Age of the Sith...