[Short Stories] - Dark Emperor 6(7)
Palpatine hesitated. This was too much of a coincidence. How had this man known he was a fugitive from the Jedi? How had he found Palpatine at all? The lingering sense of familiarity to the man suggested that he might be one of the Jedi Palpatine had personally killed. He could easily be one of the Jedi Legion, come to lead Palpatine into a final trap. But for what purpose? The two Jedi he had met earlier had implied that all of the Jedi were going to come after him at once, not just one man. And why would they need to trap him? He was defenseless. Perhaps this man was telling the truth. He decided to play for time by changing the subject.
“Do you know what this place, this world is?” asked Palpatine.
The man seemed unperturbed by Palpatine’s failure to answer his question. With a patient air, he replied, “It is a realm of the light side of the Force. The Jedi come here when they meet their deaths. Some of them linger here, but others move on to a higher plane, where great battles against evil are fought. You were never supposed to be here…but now that you are…we must do something about it before the Jedi find you and destroy you. If they do that, you will cease to exist, totally and forever. I am offering you a chance to avoid that.”
Palpatine was still unwilling to follow the man. “You told me that the Jedi are your enemies too,” he said softly. “Are you not a Jedi yourself? What have you done to deserve their wrath?”
The man was silent.
“I will not follow you if you do not share this information with me. You know who I am, I think,” Palpatine said craftily. “Yes…the Emperor Palpatine. I think anyone would agree that the Jedi have reason to hate me, as I hate them. Now, I am nearly at their mercy. If the situation was reversed, I know I would slaughter them without hesitation. I know what they will do to me. There will be much pain and humiliation for me before the end. But I am not yet captured. Caution is my only defense. Before I go with you, you must give me a reason to believe that what you say is true.”
The man remained silent for a long moment, but Palpatine only waited. Finally, the man spoke.
“I will give you a reason which you can believe in,” he said gravely. “The Jedi hunt for the Emperor Palpatine, yes, but they also hunt for his former servant. Their revenge will be terrible upon the man who was once Darth Vader.”
The world seemed to fall away from Palpatine’s feet. In one reeling instant, he identified the man before him. “You,” was all he could say. His eyes blazed, and his ragged teeth clenched.
“Yes, it is me,” said the man simply. “It is so good to see you…Master.”
The last word emerged so laden with rueful sarcasm that Palpatine flinched. Then Anakin Skywalker crossed his arms on his broad chest and offered Palpatine a smile from the depths of hell.
The two of them made their way through the rough hills in tense mutual silence for a long stretch. Anakin seemed healthy and strong for his age, and the terrain offered him little challenge. Palpatine had a far more difficult time, but Anakin offered an unquestioning helping hand each time it was necessary to cross a gap or climb a steep slope. Anakin seemed to be enjoying the silence. He must have known his former Master’s thoughts and emotions would be seething. Anakin had obviously had time to prepare mentally for their encounter, but for Palpatine, it was all quite a shock. He imagined that each time Anakin helped him cross a dangerous crevasse, the former Sith Lord must be glorying in the reversal of roles. Now Anakin was the one in charge. Now Anakin held the power of life or death for Palpatine. The record of the past did not argue favorably for Anakin using that power in a way that would be beneficial to Palpatine.
When they clambered up onto a small plateau and paused to check for pursuit, the tension simply became too great. Anakin suddenly turned on the former Emperor.
“All right,” he said. “Go ahead and say it. I can feel your anger. Go ahead and say what you’re thinking.”
Palpatine scowled and pointed one twisted, shriveled finger at Anakin. “You killed me,” he grated, infusing the accusation with the vitriol of the dark side he knew so well.
“Yes,” said Anakin, “I did. But you survived, didn’t you.”
“You betrayed me at Endor! You chose your son over me!”
It was as if Palpatine’s anger drew out Anakin’s. An unmistakable echo of Lord Darth Vader could be heard in his reply. “You betrayed me long before that, my old Master! Do you not remember what you did to the Sith order? You arranged it so that I was not at their side when they went to their destruction! I became Dark Lord over no one! And your Empire was never what you promised it would be. You lured me in with a vision of an ordered galaxy, but your real plans concerned only chaos. In the end, there would have been nothing left for either of us to rule over but shattered planets!”