Work Text:
CRESCENDO
"Beings may elect their leaders, but the Force has elected us." - Darth Plagueis
Few sentients had the power or wealth to own a private box in the galaxy's most exclusive and opulent opera house.
Being Supreme Chancellor and the last living heir to an ancient noble house on his home planet, Palpatine of Naboo had both at his disposal.
But His Excellency was so much more.
The achievements and deeds he has done for the galaxy pale in comparison to his true calling.
He was a Dark Lord of the Sith.
The Dark Lord of the Sith.
Darth Sidious, the last remaining member of the lineage that had begun with Darth Bane a millennium before.
The scintillating, refracted lights from the anti-grav engines used in the Mon Calamari production he was watching then threw a kaleidoscopic spectacle throughout the vast theatre.
One of the few things he truly enjoyed in his life was art.
It was pure expression.
In many ways, he considered himself an artist as well. One who worked the only medium that mattered.
The Force itself.
He could feel it in every fiber of his very being.
His masterpiece.
The Grand Plan—a production centuries in the making—his to mold, to direct, and to perfect. Everything has been proceeding as he had foreseen.
"Chancellor...I'm sorry I'm late," said a familiar voice from behind.
Ah...you are but right on time.
He brandished the grandfatherly smile that had become trusted by countless trillions.
"You wanted to see me, Chancellor?" and out of the corner of his eye came the tall, lean form of Anakin Skywalker.
He could feel a veritable maelstrom of emotions behind the younger man's practiced look of Jedi inscrutability.
Apprehension, anger, weariness and fear—all boiling in concert within arguably the most powerful Force-sensitive individual in history.
Good.
"Yes, Anakin," Palpatine smiled, "Come closer, I have good news."
The younger man fell to one knee on the side of his seat and leaned in to hear said news.
Very good.
He regarded the Jedi, "Our clone intelligence units have discovered the location of General Grievous. He is hiding, within the Utapau system."
A determined smile became visible on Anakin Skywalker's face, "At last, we'll be able to catch that monster and end this war."
You play your part so splendidly, dear boy, the Sith Lord thought fondly.
So he played along and appealed to his puppet's desire.
"I would worry about the collective wisdom of the Council, they didn't select you for this assignment..."
The puppet's lips pursed, the smile was gone, and the storm of emotions within him crackled with even more power.
Pathetic he thought was the puppet's face, almost pleading in its countenance. So he, with nigh lascivious intent, pulled on his vessel's strings.
"You're the best choice...by far, " Palpatine said airily.
The young Jedi fell silent but the tumult of emotions boiled further in frustration.
He decided to take it a step further. A little revelation that might just send this young Jedi; this impossibly powerful individual hurtling forever under his whim.
The Chancellor invited Anakin Skywalker to have a seat beside him and ordered the rest of his entourage to leave. Anakin Skywalker strode to the seat on his left, thinking perhaps that the Chancellor was all but engrossed in the performance.
Engrossed indeed he was; but the performance was one only he could see.
An opera of one for an audience of one.
Did he realize that he might one day meet such an individual? That he might meet the likely fruit of his and his own Master's machinations decades before?
Perhaps not.
But he was a Sith.
The past was a distraction and the present is but an illusion. Only the future held meaning...and what a future it was.
Within that theatre box, Lord Sidious knew he held the fate of the entire galaxy in the palm of his hand.
While he was never just audience in that two-man show, he was less a performer than he was its author.
A masterpiece was to be played in the realm of the Force, the grandest of stages.
Now we shall see...
"Anakin," he said slowly, "you know I am not able to rely on the Jedi Council."
The puppet turned and saw him gazing in resignation towards the distance.
"If they haven't included you in their plot, listen well..."
"I'm not sure I understand," the young Jedi mumbled, turning his head away seemingly to regard the second act.
"You must sense what I've come to suspect...the Jedi Council wants control of the Republic," Palpatine said almost blithely.
His younger companion silent in barely contained uncertainty, he decided to continue in that conversational tone, "they are planning to betray me."
"I don't think—"
"Anakin..." the Sith Lord interrupted imploringly, "search your feelings, you know...don't you?"
He looked across to the other side, into the blue eyes of Anakin Skywalker, an honest expression of pained pleas on his face.
"I know they don't trust you," the young Jedi blurted out after a moment's pause.
Just then the ballet threw fresh slivers of color across the theatre while ambient lights dimmed to further their emphasis.
He took no heed of that display.
The real performance was there, in that box. He was so deeply enmeshed in the Force that space and time held no more meaning to him.
He was not just a vessel of the Force in that moment; he was the Force.
He was the dancing lights, the music from alien instruments and the singing voices of the chorus below.
He was the crystalline molecular make of the permacrete and durasteel opera house and the perpetual dance of the subatomic particles that comprised them.
He was every cell, every thought, and every heartbeat in every sentient within that theatre and beyond.
He was Anakin Skywalker himself.
That kind of focus was required in order to make his performance a success.
It was also testament enough to his power and talent that none of the fools, even the incomparably powerful one who sat on the chair beside him, could even perceive his influence.
So he continued the charade with a resigned nod.
"Or the Senate. Or the Republic. Or democracy for that matter..."
Without looking at him, Anakin Skywalker allowed—however unwittingly—part of his restraint to loosen.
"I have to admit...my trust in them has been shaken."
The Dark Lord did not miss the intoxicating rush of power that came with that confession.
It might have been missed by anyone lesser than he. He, the supreme actor, played his part—his face solemn and resigned as he continued.
"Why?"
The words Anakin Skywalker dared not peak were roaring in the tempest within.
"They asked you to do something that made you feel dishonest didn't they."
In later years, Darth Sidious would contemplate on how such silence had never been so loud—a chorus that had nothing to do with the performance in the arena before them.
"They asked you to spy on me, didn't they?" he said with that gentle, paternal smile.
"I...don't know what to say," mumbled the puppet, unaware that he was already being made to dance on strings.
"Do you recall how as a young boy," the Chancellor spoke softly, "when you first came to this planet...that I tried to teach you the ins and outs of politics?"
Relieved, the young Jedi flashed a faint smile, "I remember that I didn't care for those lessons."
"For any lessons, as I recall. But it's a pity; you should have paid more attention...to understand politics is to understand the fundamental nature of thinking beings. Right now, you should remember one of my first teachings: all those who gain power are afraid to lose it."
The Sith Lord paused a while for effect. As if on cue, the Mon Cal performance had a sudden high note, and scarlet flashed all about the arena to be awed at.
"Even the Jedi."
"The Jedi use their power for good," Anakin Skywalker mumbled.
He did not miss the way the younger man's voice shook ever so slightly even as he said the words.
Come now.
He smiled within with sinister purpose, though his face was calm, even contemplative as he pretended to behold the escalating performance of the opera.
"'Good' is a point of view, Anakin. The Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way—including their quest for greater power."
"The Sith rely on their passion for their strength," the young Jedi blurted out.
The Chancellor had to repress a snort from hearing that.
But every good performance needed some comedy, so he continued to play his part and listened even as certain memories began to drift into his mind.
His thoughts then spoke in a voice that was not his own.
'Remember why the Sith are more powerful than the Jedi, Sidious: because we are not afraid to feel...'
A long, dead voice which nonetheless continued to inspire him from beyond the grave.
The young Jedi was oblivious as ever, "They think inwards, only about themselves."
Even as the powerful young Jedi said the words, Lord Sidious mused that Anakin might as well have had tattooed the word 'doubt' across his face.
Again his thoughts rang with that old voice, and he mentally repressed a shudder, remembering that cold, grueling day when he was still learning about the true essence of power.
'I am your torturer, Sidious. Soon you will make every effort to appease me, and with each lie you tell, with each attempt you make to reverse our roles, you will make yourself as shiny as an aurodium coin to the dark side...'
That wisdom was reflected in his quaint reply to the young man.
"And the Jedi don't?"
"The Jedi are selfless. They only care about others."
Again the voice beyond space, time, life and death answered in rebuttal.
'Who gives more shape to sentient history? The good, who adhere to the tried and true, or those who seek to rouse beings from their stupor and lead them to glory?'
Indeed, Sidious reflected.
The lights dimmed again; the dancers and chorus slowed, an eerie calm settling while the audience applauded.
'Any Sith can feign compassion and self-righteousness and master the Jedi arts, but only one in a thousand Jedi could ever become a Sith...'
That applause, in his opinion was well timed if not wrongly directed. The action in their two man play was rising.
A question loomed—was Anakin Skywalker that one Jedi?
That small reflection came with an idea; a suggestion from the very depths of the dark side of the Force.
So simple, and yet so perfect that even he marveled at its brilliance.
"Did you ever hear of The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?"
"No..."
"I thought not. It's not a story the Jedi would tell you. It is a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create...life."
The young Jedi stiffened, his eyes suddenly alert as if unable to believe what he was hearing.
"He had such a knowledge of the dark side—he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying."
Spinning his tale, the Sith Lord recalled vividly of the day many years before—how awestruck he was —when he beheld a Sith pretender being killed and then brought back from the dead over and over again until the being whom the voice in his head belonged to had allowed that one-time rival to die.
"He could actually...save people from death?" came Anakin Skywalker's choked reply, just as the show of lights from the opera began to speed up again.
The action was mounting in the Force as well...and it pleased the Sith Lord.
"The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural."
The lights of the performance flashed, and Sidious savored the inferno he had set decades before on the conniving Gran which had made the egregious mistake of playing against him and his master.
Skywalker breathed, "What happened to him?"
The chorus of the opera grew stronger as did the hunger within the Jedi Knight, both rumbling and building as if a thunderstorm.
"He became so powerful that the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power which eventually, of course, he did."
The Sith Lord reflected on the fateful night he had followed Plagueis into that penthouse. In his more pensive moments he had pondered whether or not it was destiny or fate or the Force that had brought him there.
"Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew..."
As he spoke, Palpatine genuinely smiled—one with the Force, one with his recollections, and now, he was sure, one with his prize—just as it had been decades before.
He was alone and in a drunken stupor...
"...then his apprentice killed him in his sleep,"
The Mon Calamari ballet grew ever stronger, the chorus mounting as if wanting to let the whole universe hear them, the lights ever faster and ever more intricate as to reflect the dizzying torrent of memories and power on the eve of his victory...
His wrath exploding as a storm of lightning on his victim...
Sidious smirked in malice and nostalgia, "Ironic...he could save others from death..."
His intoxication from the old Sith Lord's agony and from his own catharsis...
"...but not himself."
His wordless vengeance on the being who was both mentor and tormentor...
The Dark Lord spoke and the performances in the mundane world and that in the Force grew and grew in tandem until each was indistinguishable from the other.
His cruel amusement when the elder Sith attempted to keep his tenuous hold on life...
A veritable chorus of sheer power. Ever rising, ever mounting; aiming to reach the highest note.
His satisfaction in the knowledge that he had successfully deceived one so powerful and so wise...
Once more, countless voices sang to seemingly proclaim his reign.
Voices far older and darker than even the one that had forged him into a sovereign—the only sovereign the galaxy would ever need.
In the stage that was the realm of the Force, he exalted in his apotheosis just as the performers below exalted in their crescendo.
A true master to the end, Darth Sidious' face showed nothing to suggest something extraordinary had taken place. That the entire axis of the universe had shifted inexorably; breaking and bowing under his iron will.
"Is it...possible to learn this power?" piped the trembling voice of Anakin Skywalker over the deafening applause of the audience.
The last Dark Lord of the Sith turned his head slowly and regarded his puppet and soon-to-be pupil with a smile that spoke of gentle wisdom.
It was all he could do without standing up himself and proudly taking a bow.
"Not from a Jedi."