Midnight in the Garden

PROLOGUE: Midway through the Clone Wars ...

****DRAGON CONTEST JUDGES: You get the best idea where this story is going if you read Chapter 4, Only What You Take With You, part 2; yet you only have to read three chapters. So please read this one, Chapter One, and skip to Chapter 4. Thanks!! 

Hilarious, but I just realized that almost everything on the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack fits this story.

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"You know it is possible to change fate. There are infinite paths and infinite possibilities ... but you must open the door."

--Palpatine.

Jedi knighting ceremonies made insular affairs, Chancellor Palpatine -- the Sith Lord Darth Sidious -- reflected. Only Jedi knights were allowed to attend -- knights, and anyone close to the graduating padawans whom the padawans wished to invite. And Jedi padawans were never close to anyone except other Jedi. Palpatine was the first Supreme Chancellor to attend a knighting in many decades -- and the only practicing Sith to attend one, ever.

Padmé Amidala Skywalker had run into him at the entrance to the Jedi Temple's great Convocation Hall. Together they stood through interminable singing, chanting, lighting of torches, and various processionals down the center aisle. The ceremony did not allow for anyone to sit -- some foolish Jedi custom intended to Honor The Force We All Serve. And to discourage attendance by non-Jedi, no doubt.

Lady Skywalker had obviously been cautioned to discard her ornate headdresses and pounds of petticoats in favor of something more comfortable. Her green velvet gown, appropriately somber, showed off her tiny waist to perfection. Even so, after about an hour she started shifting from foot to foot, and Palpatine -- Master Sidious -- having been through more trials of physical privation than this tender little creature could even imagine, gazed respectfully ahead and managed to hold back a smile. Just.

The vast marble hall, dark except for evenly spaced torches on the walls, sloped gently down to a softly lit stage on which the padawans, one by one, now lit candles and recited a name, for each candle, of a person they felt had been instrumental to their success, a form of thanks before the ritual severing of the braid.

The technology of the ceremony seemed deliberately simple, perhaps in deference to tradition. Anakin had told him that the ritual shears were fifteen hundred years old, kept in mint condition, and used only for this ceremony. Each padawan walked on from stage right, lit his candles among a forest of them preplaced on the stage, knelt for the braid cutting, was dubbed a knight, and then exited stage left.

Palpatine spied Anakin next in line, and this time could not keep the smile from his lips. Once and for the last time in the history of their wretched order, a Jedi would receive his knighthood after publicly thanking a Sith.

The padawan ahead of Anakin was dubbed a knight. While he knelt on the stage and his master severed his braid, Anakin looked in Palpatine's direction, caught sight of someone, and smiled. Probably me, Palpatine thought. No one could see little Amidala from that distance. Anakin started across the stage as the previous padawan left, bowed his head with appropriate gravity as his name was announced, then walked to the candle stands and lit a lucifer from the last candle lit.

He began lighting his own candles, a small grouping of five.

One. "Master Obi-Wan Kenobi," he said. Two. "Master Yoda." Three. "Master Bant."

Palpatine was becoming annoyed.

Four. "Senator Padmé Amidala."

Ah. Now.

Five. "Master Qui-Gon Jinn."

And Anakin Skywalker blew out his lucifer and knelt on the stage. Obi-Wan Kenobi approached him bearing the ritual gold shears.