Chapter Text
Sheev Palpatine has never been a man who has struggled with the doctrine of the Sith. From the moment his eyes were first opened by Plagueis, so many years ago, he has warmly, lovingly embraced the new world he'd been cast into.
(Or at least this is what he tells himself. Perhaps he really, truly, after all this time, does not remember the struggle, the pain, the torture of what it means to become a Sith.)
(Perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps, one way or another, it is to remember to cast it onto another, to envelope them, just the same, in apprenticeship.)
That is the way of the Sith. To be, all at once, the student and the master, the tortured and the torturer, the unmade and the unmaker.
And Palpatine excels.
And, yet, his eyes have always been bigger than his stomach. More often than not, he has not considered this any sort of grand misfortune. Want, greed, hunger, after all, leads to action. Leads to triumph.
But it’s not enough. Nothing could ever be enough. When he was little, his sister used to say he was a black hole.
He never saw why it should be a negative. He would swallow the galaxy.
He was Saturn, consuming the universe.
There’s someone in his office. He can sense it.
It’s more out of curiosity, than anything, that he signals his guards to allow him entrance alone. The sheer idea surprises and amuses him in equal measure.
He slides his lightsaber into his hand, hiding it in the folds of his robes. He doubts he’ll need it, but he hasn’t gotten this far by taking his chances.
The door slides open.
There’s a boy seated in his chair behind his desk. A boy, not a man, for he can’t be more than twenty. He’s not looking at Palpatine, his eyes instead fixed on the view of Coruscant skies through the large windows. His body betrays him; every muscle is tensed, coiled like a snake ready to strike. Palpatine’s lips curl in amusement.
“To whom do I owe the pleasure?” He asks, voice falsely jovial.
The boy looks to him, then. Their eyes lock. And ah. He knows.
He remembers from so many years ago, when Maul had returned a failure. He remembers the message he'd relayed, of another student who promised his death.
He remembers being bemused, more than anything, and yet vaguely unsettled. For he did not remember another student.
Palpatine is and has always been, more than anything, sure of himself. And so he pushed aside any hesitance, any instinct he’d long since stopped listening to that said it was worth being cautious.
And, now he knows: this boy is the student.
Sheev Palpatine is a man of action, yes, but more than to anything he is a man of inaction. Of planning, of constructing delicate structure upon delicate structure of pawns, of movable pieces on the chessboard of the galaxy.
And as such, he is displeased, more than anything, when these pieces are moved by his opponents and not by his own hand.
He’d been angry, when Maul had vanished. Angry, and yet almost impressed. He hadn’t thought his student had had the fortitude to disobey him so brazenly. He’d been confident, of course, that he’d find him, punish him.
And then he hadn’t.
His mind had, of course, drifted to the student. He’d sent people, of course. He had never found anyone, despite it all. A few disappeared; he’d never known if they’d been snuffed out, or if it was simply coincidence.
He supposes he should find himself lucky his prey came to him.
“You’ve come to challenge me,” Palpatine says. It’s not a question. Such is the way of all of the Sith.
“Not challenge,” the boy counters. “Extinguish.”
Palpatine has never been the type to find an interest in the idea of anything as nebulous as retribution, the type to find himself thinking of such things as the justice of the universe. He knows damn well the universe isn’t punishing a soul.
And yet he finds himself thinking of it now, just for a moment, as the boy brandishes a red lightsaber. Some long-numbed prey drive in his brain shutters to life, and he finds himself shivering before he can suppress it.
That, more than anything, is what incenses him. Not that this boy has been trained by someone who’s not him, who’s been taught by an imposter. Not that this boy has interrupted him, thought himself worthy of challenging him. Not that this boy–– this boy, because he’s still a child–– knows who, knows what he is when no one should.
No. It’s his basest instinct. It’s that somewhere, some impulse he can’t control, screams that this child is a threat worth taking seriously.
He ignites his own saber. The red reflects off the boy’s eyes, and Palpatine can’t tell what red is reflection and what is his own.
The boy’s stance is practiced, laced with intentionality, strong. Palpatine knows damn well there is no other Sith. And so it unsettles him, to know that this boy must have learned somewhere. He doesn’t let it show.
He throws himself at the enemy.
Palpatine's strengths lay in his mind, in his ability to plan, to scheme. That does not mean he’s not proficient in combat.
And yet. The boy doesn’t seem to struggle. Their sabers clash, a horrible, screeching noise in the relative quiet of the office.
Palpatine finds himself wishing he hadn't sent away his guards.
All in all, it does not take long. The boy is younger, stronger–– somehow, somehow, stronger.
Palpatine grits his teeth, bones practically creaking with the effort it takes to ward off his attacker. The boy reaches, fingers twisting, and a hand is pulled off his saber.
Palpatine grunts, reaching, grabbing, scrabbling at the Force like a man clutching for a handhold, grasping at anything he can get.
Who is this boy?
Anger is the fuel of the Dark side; hatred is his master. He pulls at it, twists at it, throws it back in this usurper child's face. The boy gasps, stumbling back a few steps, and Palpatine grins, a ghastly, terribly thing.
And then the air roils. It makes him feel sick. It makes him feel strong.
It's the boy's. The boy's strength. The boy's power.
“Who are you?” Palpatine finally asks, half in horror, half in fascination. “Who taught you?”
The boy smiles, then. For the second time, it sends long-forgotten fear up Palpatine’s spine.
“You did.”
And Palpatine loses, then. His attention is wrested, for a moment, his mind racing with the need to comprehend, to understand what it means, what it could ever mean, and that’s all the edge his opponent needs. For there’s no way for Palpatine to know, but the boy knows quite well how he fights, knows how to win.
Palpatine loses. His lightsaber is thrown from his hands, extinguishing and clattering against the far wall. He throws his hands out, the Force practically shaking in his hands with the effort he pushes into it to hold off his attacker. It doesn’t matter. The boy grunts in exertion, pushing back, and then it slips.
The saber plunges into Palpatine’s chest with a hiss and a gasp of pain and nothing more. His knees give out. He falls onto the tile of the office, staring up at his killer in shock more than anything.
For just a moment, in his eyes, the silhouette above him changes shape. His vision is already going blurry, darkness creeping in at the edges, but for a moment it all sharpens.
The face above him morphs to a mask, the desert-colored clothes morph to black. It’s someone else.
And Palpatine knows it’s his. Knows this other, knows this person-who-is-not, is his. He’s not sure why, or how–– maybe it’s just pain, just the delusions of a dying man. But he knows.
He was Saturn, consuming his son.
In the end, some part of him is glad. Some part of him rejoices. If he is to lose, if he is to die, then let it be by his student. Even if he doesn’t remember him. Even if this boy could just as soon be someone he has never seen before.
Such is the Sith. The master, killed by the student, let him continue the legacy.
(For there is no way he can know that this boy is no Sith, nor a Jedi either. There is no way he can know he has really, truly, lost, in every sense of the word.
And he has. And he dies.)
(Anakin–– Vader–– both, and neither–– extinguishes his lightsaber. The room goes dark. He turns his back on the body, turns to look, once again, out at the lights of Coruscant.
In the morning, the guards will find Palpatine’s body. Some will rejoice. Many more will mourn. They will wonder. Those who knew him–– truly, knew him, few as they were–– will fear.
In the morning, he’ll return home. To Tatooine. To his mother and brother. To the familiar twin suns.
In the morning, the galaxy will change. Less than it would have, otherwise, and yet: it will.)