Yoda walked through the corridor of the Jedi Temple.
Nobody spoke.
Because Yoda was speaking and when Yoda was speaking like this you listened.
"The Son of God," Yoda said. "The Force, He is."
His stick touched the floor with each step.
"Reached toward Him our entire lives we have. Every meditation. Every communion with the living Force. Every moment of clarity in the field." He paused. "Him. Always Him it was."
Ki-Adi-Mundi said carefully, "Master Yoda—"
"What did we do," Yoda continued, as if Ki-Adi-Mundi had not spoken. "With this connection. With this gift. Rules we built around it. Walls. Restrictions. Do not love we said. Do not attach. Do not feel." He stopped walking.
The council stopped with him.
"Discipline we called it," he said.
A pause.
"Fear it was," he said.
He started walking again.
"Stop this charade we must," Yoda said.
"What charade Master Yoda," Plo Koon said quietly.
"All of it," Yoda said. "The performance of detachment. The pretense that caring for nothing makes us stronger. The enemy of the Force we called love. When the Force itself—" he paused, "—when He Himself, love is."
The corridor was quiet except for footsteps and the gimer stick.
"And Skywalker," Yoda said.
The name landed.
"Failed him we have," Yoda said.
Simply.
Directly.
No qualification.
"From the beginning failed him we did," Yoda said. "The power we saw. The prophecy we saw. The chosen one we saw." His voice did something it almost never did. "The boy inside the chosen one we forgot."
Mace walked beside him saying nothing.
"Lost his mother he did," Yoda continued. "Loves his wife he does. Loves his padawan. With everything in him he loves, the way God made him to love." He stopped at the Temple entrance. "And what did we tell him."
Nobody answered.
"That the path to the dark side love was," Yoda said.
He looked at the council around him.
"The chosen one we treated him as," Yoda said. "Instead of as a human being."
The words fell into the silence.
"The chosen one he may be," Yoda said. "But a man he is also. A husband. A friend. A padawan who needed to hear that what he felt was not weakness." He turned toward the landing platforms. "Never told him that we did."
Mace Windu spoke.
"No," Mace said.
Just that.
"No," he said again. "We didn't."
Yoda looked at him.
"Good," Yoda said.
"Good?" Mace said.
"Knowing what we did wrong, the beginning of doing better it is," Yoda said. "Now come. Deserves to hear from us what we should have said years ago, this young man does."
He walked.
The council followed.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCuZAMcWPrt
35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGMjMvEKw5G
35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwo8a4ZKVsG
Whitebeard had been watching Anakin from the end of the table.
Not obviously. Not intrusively. The way a man watches someone when he recognizes something in them that he has seen before in people he loved.
The untouched food.
The eyes that were present in the room but somewhere else entirely.
The jaw set just a little too tight.
The hands.
Whitebeard knew what a man looked like when he was holding something too heavy for one person and had been holding it alone for too long.
He pushed back from the table.
Stood up.
Walked the length of the galley.
He was enormous in the space. The galley was a good size but Edward Newgate filled rooms the way certain people filled rooms — not aggressively, just completely. His presence arrived before he did.
He stopped beside Anakin.
Anakin looked up at him.
At the scale of him. At the cybernetic reinforcement visible at his collar. At the eyes of a man who had lived long enough to recognize pain in all its forms and had stopped pretending not to see it.
Whitebeard put his hand on Anakin's back.
One enormous hand.
Gentle.
The same hand that had held his crew together across decades of ocean. That had been on the back of Marco's head in the medical bay. That had touched the sign on his cabin door to confirm it was real.
"You okay, son," Whitebeard said.
The word landed the way it always landed when Edward Newgate said it.
Not a title.
Not a formality.
Just the word of a man who meant it completely and had never once used it lightly.
Anakin looked at him.
The chosen one. The most powerful Force user alive. The general of the Republic. The man who had faced Sith Lords and battle droids and the horrors of the Clone Wars without flinching.
Something in his face went very quiet.
The way things go quiet when someone asks exactly the right question at exactly the right moment.
"No," Anakin said.
Honest.
Just honest.
No performance. No general voice. No chosen one composure.
Just a man saying no I'm not okay to someone who asked and meant it.
Whitebeard nodded slowly.
He didn't offer solutions.
He didn't say it would be fine.
He didn't tell Anakin what to do or how to feel or what the right path forward was.
He just kept his hand on Anakin's back and nodded.
The acknowledgment of a man who understood that sometimes that was the whole thing.
Sometimes someone just needed to be asked and to have the answer received without it being immediately fixed.
Ahsoka watched from across the table.
Her expression was doing something complicated.
Rose, sitting beside Jeremy, put her hand quietly on Jeremy's arm.
Jeremy looked at her.
She nodded toward Whitebeard and Anakin.
Jeremy looked.
At the biggest pirate in the history of the One Piece world sitting beside the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy with one hand on his back asking if he was okay.
He felt something in his chest that didn't have a clean name.
"Yeah," Jeremy said quietly to Rose.
"That's why you went back for him," Rose said.
Not a question.
Jeremy looked at her.
At Rose.
His Rose.
"Yeah," he said again.
Whitebeard looked down at Anakin.
"Want to talk about it, son," he said.
Anakin looked at the panoramic windows.
At Coruscant outside.
At the galaxy he had been fighting for since he was nine years old.
"I don't know where to start," Anakin said.
"Start anywhere," Whitebeard said. "I've got time."
He pulled out the chair beside Anakin and sat down.
Which given his scale was a commitment.
And waited.
With the patience of a man who had sat with his crew through countless nights on countless oceans and knew that sometimes the most powerful thing you could do was simply not go anywhere.
Anakin looked at him for a moment.
Then he started talking.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA9yF28nXY2
35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNpsGzMbN83
35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtniZBQiSsM
Anakin looked at the panoramic windows for a moment.
At Coruscant.
At the city that never stopped moving below them.
Then he started.
"I was nine years old when they found me," he said. "On Tatooine. A slave. Me and my mom." He paused. "Qui-Gon saw something in me. Said I was the chosen one. Said I was strong in the Force." Another pause. "And I was. I am. I know that." He wasn't boasting. Just stating a fact the way you state facts you've had long enough to make peace with. "But from the moment I got to the Temple it was always about that. Always about what I could do. What I was supposed to become. What the prophecy meant."
Whitebeard listened.
Hand still on his back.
Not moving.
Not interrupting.
"They almost didn't take me," Anakin said. "Yoda said I was too old. Too emotional. Too attached." He said the last word with something in it that wasn't quite bitterness but was adjacent to it. "Too attached. I was nine. I'd just left my mother behind on a planet where she was still a slave and they told me my feelings were a problem."
Whitebeard said nothing.
Which was exactly right.
"I loved her," Anakin said. "My mom. And I couldn't go back for her. And I couldn't talk about it because attachment was forbidden and grief was something you were supposed to just—" he made a vague gesture, "—process through the Force and let go of." He shook his head. "I never let go of it. I just got better at hiding it."
Outside the panoramic windows a Republic cruiser moved through the Coruscant traffic lanes. Slow and enormous and completely indifferent to the conversation happening on the landing platform.
"And then she died," Anakin said. "I felt it through the Force before I even knew. I went back to Tatooine and I was too late and I—" he stopped. "I did things I'm not going to talk about right now. But I did them. And I couldn't tell anyone. Because the Council would have seen it as proof they were right about me."
Whitebeard's hand moved slightly on his back.
Just slightly.
The small adjustment of someone who is paying full attention.
"Then Padme," Anakin said. And his voice changed when he said her name. Not softer exactly. More careful. The way you speak about something you are terrified of losing. "I love her. I've loved her since I was nine years old and I know how that sounds but it's true. She's my wife. We got married in secret because we had to. Because if the Council knew—" he stopped. "We've been lying for years. Every day. Smiling in the right rooms and pretending and going home to each other and pretending some more."
He looked at his hands.
The flesh one and the mechanical one.
"And now I'm having this dream," he said. "About losing her. About her dying. And I can't talk to the Council about it because they'll tell me to let go. And I can't talk to Obi-Wan because—" he paused, "—because he's my master and my brother and I love him and I don't know how to make him understand that she's not a weakness. She's the reason I'm still—" he stopped again.
Found the word.
"Still here," he said quietly.
The galley was very quiet.
Rose at the other end of the table had her hand over her mouth.
Ahsoka was looking at Anakin with the expression of a padawan who had known her master for years and was hearing things she had suspected and never been able to ask about.
"And then that man," Anakin said. Palpatine. He didn't say the name. He didn't need to. "He listened. He always listened. He asked about my day. He remembered things. He made me feel like what I was feeling was real and valid and not something to be ashamed of." He paused. "And the whole time—"
He couldn't finish that sentence.
Whitebeard finished it for him.
Not with words.
Just by tightening his hand slightly on Anakin's back.
The understanding of a man who knew what it meant to be betrayed by someone you trusted.
Anakin sat with that for a moment.
"I just wanted someone to tell me it was okay," Anakin said finally. "That loving her was okay. That missing my mom was okay. That being afraid sometimes was okay." He looked at the window. "That I was allowed to be a person and not just—" he gestured at himself, "—whatever this is supposed to be."
Silence.
Five minutes of truth that had been waiting years to be said out loud.
Whitebeard sat with it.
Let it settle.
Let it be what it was without rushing toward the part where it got better.
Then he said, very quietly—
"Should have told you that a long time ago, someone should have."
Anakin looked at him.
"It is okay," Whitebeard said. "All of it. Loving your wife. Missing your mother. Being afraid." He paused. "Being a person."
Anakin looked at the biggest man he had ever seen in his life.
A pirate from another universe entirely.
Who had just said in ten seconds what no one in the Jedi Order had said to him in fifteen years.
"Who are you," Anakin said.
"Edward Newgate," Whitebeard said.
Anakin looked at the name on the cabin door visible down the corridor.
Looked back at him.
"The ship is named after you," Anakin said.
"It is," Whitebeard said.
"Why."
Whitebeard glanced at Jeremy across the galley.
Jeremy was looking at the window.
Giving them the moment.
"Because someone thought I deserved to be remembered," Whitebeard said. "Not just the legend. The man."
Anakin was quiet.
"You deserve to be seen too, son," Whitebeard said. "Not just the chosen one. The man."
Anakin looked at his hands again.
Opened them.
Closed them.
And for the first time since he'd sat down at the table in the galley of the Edward Newgate he looked like he was actually in the room.
Fully.
Present.
Not somewhere else managing something.
Just there.
"Thank you," Anakin said.
"Don't thank me," Whitebeard said. "Eat your food. It's getting cold."
Anakin looked at his plate.
Picked up his fork.
Took a bite.
"It's good," he said.
"Bob Evans," Whitebeard said with the authority of a man who had eaten three pies and had opinions. "Everything they make is good."
Jeremy looked at the ceiling.
Said nothing.
Rose pressed her lips together.
Ahsoka looked between all of them trying to understand what Bob Evans was and why it kept coming up.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfTxTeJJciR
35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFJWjN9mA3e
35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUgIqSHnGdM
The Jedi Council arrived at the gangplank of the Edward Newgate.
Yoda first.
Mace beside him.
The others behind.
They had made it approximately four steps up the gangplank when a figure filled the entrance above them.
Edward Newgate.
All of him.
Looking down at the Jedi Council of the Galactic Republic with the expression of a man who had been listening to a young man pour out fifteen years of pain for five minutes and had some things to say about the people responsible for it.
"Hold up," Whitebeard said.
His voice was quiet.
The specific quiet that people who knew Edward Newgate knew was more serious than loud.
The council stopped.
"Before I let you see that young man," Whitebeard said, "I want you to know something."
He came down the gangplank slowly.
To his full height on the platform.
Looking at the assembled Jedi Council.
"I have raised a thousand sons," he said. "My pirate crew. Every one of them. Sons and daughters. Family." He let that land. "I know what it means to be responsible for people who call you father." He paused. "And the way you treat yours is something I don't have a clean word for."
Mace Windu stepped forward.
"Step aside," Mace said. His hand went to his lightsaber. "We have no quarrel with you but we will not be—"
He ignited it.
Purple blade humming in the Coruscant air.
Pointing at Edward Newgate.
Whitebeard looked at the lightsaber.
Then at Mace.
With the expression of a man who had been pointed at by considerably more threatening things and had not moved for any of them.
He raised one hand.
And used the Tremor Tremor Fruit.
Not much.
Just enough.
A focused pulse of vibrational force that went directly into the platform beneath Mace Windu's feet and traveled up through the soles of his boots and expressed an opinion.
Mace Windu went down.
Not gracefully.
Flat on his behind on the landing platform of Coruscant with his lightsaber skittering two feet to his left still ignited.
He stared up at Whitebeard.
"No," Whitebeard said.
The word had the weight of the ocean behind it.
"You are going to listen to me."
Nobody moved.
Yoda stood very still.
Not because he couldn't act.
Because he was choosing not to.
Because Yoda had just come from a conversation with the Son of God and had arrived at a landing platform to find the largest man he had ever seen in nine hundred years of living standing over Mace Windu and saying you are going to listen to me.
And Yoda's instinct — the oldest, deepest instinct he had — said.
Yes.
He is right.
Listen.
Whitebeard looked at the council.
All of them.
One at a time.
"That young man in there," he said. "Skywalker."
He said the name the way Jeremy said names. Like it belonged to a person.
"All he has ever wanted," Whitebeard said, "is to be told that what he feels is real. That loving the people he loves is not a flaw. That being afraid sometimes does not make him broken." He paused. "And what did you give him."
The council was silent.
"A chair that never quite fit," Whitebeard said. "A title that put him above everyone without putting him with anyone. Suspicion when he needed trust. Distance when he needed family." His voice stayed level. Not shouting. Not performing. Just the steady weight of a man who meant every word. "And when the enemy came for him through the thing he loved most you had already told him that loving was the problem."
Mace Windu sat on the platform.
Lightsaber still two feet away.
Not reaching for it.
"You did not raise a son," Whitebeard said. "You maintained an asset. And you called it shepherding the chosen one." He looked at each of them again. "I have raised a thousand sons. I know the difference."
The platform was completely still.
Even Coruscant seemed quieter.
"He is not your idol," Whitebeard said. "He is not your prophecy. He is not your instrument." He paused. "He is a man. Who deserved better. From the people who were supposed to love him."
Yoda closed his eyes.
Opened them.
"Right you are," Yoda said quietly.
Every word of it.
Mace Windu looked up at Whitebeard from the platform floor.
The expression on his face was not the expression of a man who had just been knocked down by a pirate's Devil Fruit.
It was the expression of a man who had just been told the truth by one and knew it.
He reached over.
Picked up his lightsaber.
Deactivated it.
"You're right," Mace said.
Whitebeard looked at him.
"I said you're right," Mace said again. Clearer. With the full weight of a man who did not say those words easily and was saying them anyway. "We failed him."
Whitebeard held his gaze for a long moment.
Then he stepped aside.
"Come in," he said.
"Thank you," Yoda said.
He walked past Whitebeard up the gangplank.
Stopped.
Looked up at the enormous man.
"A good father," Yoda said quietly, "you are."
Whitebeard said nothing.
But something moved across his face.
Brief.
Real.
And then he followed the Jedi Council onto the Edward Newgate.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4tXVtNu4kj
35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwZlN2t92RC
35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlEy1mwkvfu
OH. Jeremy stepping up after Whitebeard and going full Cincinnati on the Jedi Council. The Bob Evans Reese's Cup pie detail as the measure of how broken Anakin is. And Jeremy invoking actual biblical authority on Mace. This is such a powerful and also somehow hilarious moment. Here's the continuation---
Whitebeard had said his piece.
Stepped aside.
And then Jeremy stepped forward.
"Hold up," Jeremy said. "Edward spoke his. Now I'm gonna speak mine."
Mace Windu opened his mouth.
"Mace Windu," Jeremy said.
Something in his voice stopped Mace cold.
Not volume. Not the Overcomers Haki.
Just the voice of a man who had prayed before he jumped out of a ship and had not stopped being answered since.
"In the name of Jesus," Jeremy said, "I will strike you blind and cause your hands to wither if you open that mouth before I'm finished."
The platform was absolutely silent.
Mace Windu closed his mouth.
Looked at his hands.
Decided that Jeremy meant it.
Because Jeremy looked like he meant it.
Because Jeremy had stood on the battlefield of Marineford and put ten thousand marines on their knees and Mace Windu had just watched a pirate knock him down with a fruit ability and the morning had already been significant enough that he was willing to let this man finish.
Jeremy looked at all of them.
"Do you know what's happening in that galley right now," Jeremy said.
Nobody answered.
"That young man in there," Jeremy said. "That chosen one. That general. That Jedi Knight that you people have been leaning on since he was nine years old." He paused. "He is sitting at a table crying."
The council said nothing.
"Over a piece of Bob Evans Reese's Cup pie," Jeremy said.
Ki-Adi-Mundi blinked. "I don't understand what that—"
"It doesn't matter what it is," Jeremy said. "What matters is why." He stepped forward. "He's not crying because of the pie. He's crying because somebody was kind to him. Because somebody sat next to him and put a hand on his back and asked if he was okay and meant it. And that kindness—" he stopped, "—that one simple human moment of somebody giving a damn about him as a person—"
He stopped again.
His voice was doing something.
He let it do it.
"It broke him open," Jeremy said. "Because it was the first time in so long that somebody treated him like a human being instead of a weapon with a prophecy attached to it that he didn't know what to do with it." He looked at each of them. "And no person. NO person. Should be sitting in a galley on my ship crying over a piece of Reese's Cup pie because a stranger was kind to him for five minutes and it was the most care he'd felt in years."
The platform was completely still.
"You," Jeremy said.
He pointed.
Not at one of them.
At all of them.
"You are supposed to be his family," Jeremy said. "You are supposed to be the people he comes home to. The people who see him. The people who know him." His voice was steady but the steadiness was doing work. "And instead you made him hide his wife. Hide his grief. Hide his fear. Hide everything that makes him human because you decided that human feelings were incompatible with being the chosen one."
Mace Windu looked at the ground.
"You are unrepentant," Jeremy said. "That's what gets me. Not that you made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. But you sat in that Temple for YEARS and watched that young man struggle and drown and hide and you told yourselves it was discipline. You told yourselves it was the will of the Force." He shook his head. "That wasn't the Force. That was you. Making choices. And choosing wrong. Every single time."
He stopped.
Took a breath.
The breath of a man who has said what needed saying and is now deciding what comes next.
"Now," Jeremy said. "You are going to go in there. And you are going to sit down at that table. And you are going to look Anakin Skywalker in the eye and tell him the truth." He paused. "Not the Council's truth. Not the Order's truth. The truth. That you failed him. That you're sorry. That what he feels is real and valid and not a weakness." He paused again. "And then you are going to figure out how to do better. Starting today. Starting right now."
He stepped back.
Looked at Yoda.
Yoda looked back at him with those ancient eyes that had seen nine hundred years of everything.
"Said what needed to be said, you have," Yoda said quietly.
"I'm not done," Jeremy said.
Yoda waited.
"Palpatine is Darth Sidious," Jeremy said. "He's been running both sides of this war from the beginning. I have proof on my ship. Full documentation. Claude pull it up on the external display."
"Displaying now," Claude said.
The evidence appeared on the hull of the Edward Newgate.
Communications. Financial records. Connections between the Chancellor's office and Separatist leadership going back years. Everything laid out with the clean precision of an AI that had organized it into the most comprehensible sequence possible.
The Jedi Council looked at it.
In silence.
For a long time.
Mace Windu looked at the evidence.
Then at Jeremy.
"We need to move on this today," Mace said.
"Yes you do," Jeremy said. "But first—" he pointed at the gangplank, "—you go in there and you talk to your son."
Mace looked at the gangplank.
At the ship.
At the name on the hull.
Edward Newgate.
He looked at Whitebeard.
"You knocked me down," Mace said.
"Yes," Whitebeard said.
"With a fruit ability."
"Yes," Whitebeard said.
Mace was quiet for a moment.
"I deserved it," Mace said.
"Yes," Whitebeard said.
Something that was almost a smile crossed Mace Windu's face.
Almost.
"After you," he said to Yoda.
Yoda was already walking up the gangplank.
Jeremy stood on the platform and watched the Jedi Council file onto the Edward Newgate one by one.
Rose appeared at the top of the gangplank.
She looked at Jeremy.
"You okay," she said.
Jeremy looked at Coruscant around them.
At the city that never stopped.
At the galaxy that was about to change.
"Yeah," he said.
"You hungry," Rose said.
"Yeah," he said again.
"I saved you a piece of pie," Rose said.
Jeremy looked at her.
"Whitebeard ate three," Rose said. "I hid one for you in the back of the freezer behind the vegetables."
Jeremy walked up the gangplank.
"Behind the vegetables," he said.
"Nobody looks behind the vegetables," Rose said.
"That's my girl," Jeremy said.
Jeremy held up one hand.
"One more thing," he said. "Before I let you go in there."
The council stopped.
"I would not blame him," Jeremy said. "Not one bit. If Anakin walked out of that galley and said nah. I'm done. I'm out. I'm going to go live my life with my wife." He paused. "It would kind of serve you all right."
Nobody argued.
Because nobody could.
"And honestly," Jeremy said, "I think the best thing you could do for him — the single most loving thing this council has ever been in a position to do for Anakin Skywalker — is let him live his life. With Padme. With his family." He paused. "Because in the next year and a half she is going to have children."
Obi-Wan's eyes widened slightly.
"How can you have balance in the Force," Jeremy said, "if you don't have balance within yourselves? Within your own ranks?" He looked around at all of them. "You preach balance. You teach balance. The chosen one is supposed to bring balance." He shook his head. "But you are not balanced. You are broken. And you have been passing that brokenness down through generations and calling it tradition."
He turned.
Looked directly at Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Obi-Wan met his gaze steadily.
The gaze of a man who already knew something was coming.
"You," Jeremy said.
He pulled up the footage on the external display.
Just the end of it.
Mustafar.
The lava. The banks. Two men who had been brothers fighting with everything they had until one of them had nothing left.
And Obi-Wan standing above Anakin on the high ground saying I have the high ground.
And walking away.
"You left him there," Jeremy said quietly.
Obi-Wan looked at the footage.
His jaw tightened.
"You had the high ground," Jeremy said. "You said it. And then you walked away and left him on that bank and that's why the Emperor was able to pick him up. Rebuild him. Put him in that suit and use what was left of him for twenty years." He paused. "That's on you. Partially. Not entirely. But partially."
Obi-Wan said nothing.
Because Obi-Wan was honest enough to know that nothing was the right response.
"Now," Jeremy said. "I want you to think about something. In the body of Christ — that's my faith, my people, my family — when someone backslides. When someone falls. When someone goes somewhere dark they shouldn't have gone." He paused. "What do we do?"
He looked at them.
"We go after them," he said. "We speak truth in love. We don't condemn. We don't cast out. We don't stand on the high ground and deliver a verdict and walk away." He shook his head. "Because the condemnation — the judgment — the you have fallen and therefore you are beyond us — that's the thing that makes people think they're too far gone to come back."
He looked at the Jedi Council.
At each face.
"You know what keeps people in sin?" Jeremy said. "The church telling them they're too far gone to ask for forgiveness. You know what keeps Jedi in the dark side?" He gestured at them. "You. Treating the fallen like they stopped being worth going after."
Obi-Wan closed his eyes.
Opened them.
"We are called to speak truth in love," Jeremy said. "Not to judge. Not to condemn. Not to stand on high ground while someone burns below us and call it principle." He paused. "The cancer in our own churches — the reason people walk away and don't come back — is because somewhere along the way we forgot that truth without love isn't righteousness. It's just cruelty with scripture attached."
He let that land.
"Same thing happened here," Jeremy said. "Your doctrine became your identity. Your rules became your righteousness. And Anakin Skywalker paid the price for your false doctrine." He paused. "I would beg you. Put it away. The doctrine that love is weakness. The doctrine that attachment is the enemy. The doctrine that feelings make you less." He shook his head. "It's false. It has always been false. And the fruit of it is in that galley crying over a Reese's Cup pie."
The platform was silent.
Completely silent.
Yoda stood with his eyes closed.
When he opened them they were bright.
"False doctrine," Yoda said slowly. Tasting the words. "Hidden it was in wisdom. In tradition. In nine hundred years of teaching." He paused. "False it still was."
"Yes sir," Jeremy said.
Yoda looked at Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan looked at the display where the Mustafar footage had been.
"I left him," Obi-Wan said.
Not to anyone specifically.
Just out loud.
The acknowledgment of a man arriving at something he had been not quite looking at for a long time.
"You did," Jeremy said. Not cruelly. Just honestly. "And you can't undo that in that timeline. But you're standing here in this one. Before it happens." He paused. "So what are you going to do differently."
Obi-Wan looked at the gangplank.
At the ship.
At the name on the hull.
At the cabin door sign visible through the open bay.
At everything that a blind man from Cincinnati had built and named and filled with his people and flown through a dimensional boundary to park on a Coruscant landing platform specifically for this moment.
"I'm going to tell him the truth," Obi-Wan said.
"What truth," Jeremy said.
Obi-Wan was quiet for a moment.
"That I love him," Obi-Wan said. "Like a brother. And that I have not always shown him that the way I should have."
Jeremy nodded.
"And Padme," Jeremy said.
Obi-Wan looked at him.
"Congratulate him," Jeremy said. "On his marriage. On his family. On the children that are coming." He paused. "Mean it."
Obi-Wan nodded slowly.
"The council needs to make a formal decision," Jeremy said. "Today. Before anyone leaves this ship. That Anakin Skywalker is free to love his wife openly. That his family is recognized. That he is not a chosen one in a chair. He is a man with a life and that life is valid and supported and not a secret."
He looked at Mace Windu.
Mace Windu looked back at him.
"Agreed," Mace said.
Quietly.
Completely.
"Good," Jeremy said.
He stepped aside.
Gestured at the gangplank.
"Go talk to your son," Jeremy said.
Yoda walked forward.
Stopped at the bottom of the gangplank.
Looked up at Jeremy.
"The body of Christ," Yoda said carefully. "Your people they are."
"Yes sir," Jeremy said.
"Speak truth in love," Yoda said. "This is your doctrine."
"Yes sir," Jeremy said.
Yoda considered this for a moment.
"Better doctrine than ours," Yoda said quietly. "For a very long time."
He walked up the gangplank.
The council followed.
Obi-Wan was last.
He stopped beside Jeremy.
"Thank you," Obi-Wan said.
"Don't thank me," Jeremy said. "Go be his brother."
Obi-Wan walked up the gangplank.
Jeremy stood on the landing platform of Coruscant alone for a moment.
The city breathed below him.
He looked at the sky.
"Okay Lord," he said quietly. "What's next."
The wind moved across the platform.
The Edward Newgate hummed behind him.
And somewhere in the galaxy Palpatine was sitting in his office not yet knowing that everything had just changed.
ns216.73.217.39da2
and then Add to home screen.