=== Qui-Gon ===
Hours later the apartment had fallen into uneasy stillness. Qui-Gon sat beside the med-bay entrance with his back against the cool wall, eyes closed yet restless, listening to the faint cadence of Dooku's breathing through the door and the distant, muffled hum of Coruscant traffic bleeding through the layers of shielding.
He felt the shift in the Force before he heard the change in the machines, a subtle stirring that brushed against his awareness, and when the door slid open he was already on his feet, moving toward the bed as Dooku's eyes fluttered open. The older man's gaze was unfocused at first before clarity slowly returned and he drew in a careful breath, the faintest wince crossing his features as pain reminded him of where he was and why.
"We don't have much time," Qui-Gon said quietly, his voice low and urgent as he leaned closer, one hand hovering near Dooku's shoulder. "Padmé has agreed to shelter us for now, but once you're able to move, we need to go. The Republic will not stop hunting us, and the longer we linger, the more danger we are in."
Dooku let out a tired breath that was almost a laugh, though there was no humor in it, and shifted carefully as he pushed himself upright, the bandages across his abdomen pulling tight as he tested his weight. "I suspected as much," he murmured, his voice rough but steadying with each word. "She is loyal to the Republic, and more than that, loyal to Anakin. She was never going to hear our side of this without suspicion clouding her judgment." He swung his legs over the side of the cot, pausing to steady himself before rising with a pained groan that he tried, and failed, to hide.
Qui-Gon reached out, gripping his arm to keep him upright, concern creasing his brow as he guided him to stand fully on his own. "Easy," he said, firm but gentle.
Dooku drew himself straighter, though the effort was evident in the tight line of his mouth, and looked at Qui-Gon with a weary, searching gaze. "Then tell me your plan," he said quietly.
"We find Anakin," Qui-Gon replied without hesitation. "We stop him from tearing what remains of the Galaxy apart, from becoming the instrument of whatever darkness has claimed him. I've already prepared for this. As you slept, I placed a tracker on Padmé's personal ship. Wherever she goes, it will lead us to him. She's already left."
Dooku studied him for a long moment, his expression a mixture of surprise and something dangerously close to disbelief. "Ever the patient one, Qui-Gon. And what, exactly, do you intend to do when you find him? Confront him? Arrest him? Or will you stand there and plead with him while he cuts down everything in his path?"
Qui-Gon met his gaze evenly. "I will speak to him," he said simply. "Anakin is confused. He has been manipulated, turned against the very people who once believed in him. I know the darkness has hold of him, but I also know that it does not have to be the end of his story. He is the Chosen One, Dooku. He is meant to bring balance to the Force, not drown it in blood."
Dooku's lips tightened. "You speak of prophecy while the bodies of the Order are still warm," he said, his voice low and edged with pain. "Anakin slaughtered Masters, Knights, younglings who had never even drawn a blade in anger. Balance does not come from that kind of ruin. If the Sith have turned him, as you say, then you are chasing a ghost of the boy you once knew."
"I won't fight him," Qui-Gon said, his voice unwavering despite the tremor of emotion beneath it. "Not unless I have no other choice. He is still my student, in my heart if nowhere else. The Sith may have twisted him, but they have not erased who he was. I will do everything in my power to bring him back to the light, to remind him of the man he wanted to be before fear and ambition were used against him."
Dooku shook his head slowly, a tired sigh escaping him as he leaned back against the edge of the cot for support. "You are asking for a miracle," he murmured. "Sometimes there is no climbing back up from the pit he is in."
"If you had fallen to the dark side," Qui-Gon replied quietly, stepping closer, his hand settling on Dooku's shoulder firmly, "I would do the same for you. I would stand in your way if I had to, but I would never stop believing that there was still light within you worth saving. Anakin deserves that chance as well. The Force does not abandon its own so easily, and neither will I."
For a long moment Dooku said nothing, his gaze drifting to the far wall as if he could see through it to the broken galaxy beyond, and when he finally looked back at Qui-Gon there was a faint, rueful curve to his mouth. "You were always stubborn," he said softly, though there was warmth beneath. "Very well. If you are determined to chase hope into the jaws of darkness, then I will walk with you a little farther yet. But do not ask me to believe that words alone will save him."
"I won't," Qui-Gon answered. "I only ask that you stand with me when the moment comes. Whatever Anakin has become, he was once our student, and I refuse to let the Sith claim him without a fight for his soul."
=== Anakin ===
The heat of Mustafar wrapped around Anakin the moment the ramp of his shuttle dropped, a suffocating, sulfur-choked breath that crawled into his lungs and coated the back of his throat. The sky above the forge world boiled with ash and embers as rivers of molten fire cut glowing scars across the blackened rock below, turning the horizon into a living furnace.
The battalion of clones poured out behind him in disciplined lines, boots striking the metal deck and then the scorched ground beyond in perfect, hollow unison, their white armor already reflecting the hellish glow of the lava flows as they fanned out into a defensive perimeter, blasters raised and sweeping for threats.
An Imperium officer strode forward from the shadow of a nearby structure, his armor scorched and dulled by Mustafar's constant heat, a squad of Mandalorians fanning out behind him, blasters raised and trained on the newcomers. "You are trespassing on Imperial-controlled territory," the officer barked, his voice distorted slightly by his helm as he planted himself between Anakin and the towering foundry beyond. "State your purpose here before you condemn your men to die on this rock."
Anakin did not slow his stride. He did not even look at the man as he lifted a hand, the gesture lazy, almost bored, and with a sharp, invisible wrench the officer's neck snapped sideways with a wet crack, the body collapsing into the blackened dust at Anakin's feet.
The Mandalorians barely had time to shout in alarm before Anakin surged forward in a blur of black cloak and ignited blade, the blue light of his saber carving arcs through the ash-choked air as blasterfire erupted around him in frantic, panicked bursts. One bolt screamed toward his chest and he turned his wrist just enough to catch it on his blade, sending it screaming back into the Mandalorian's visor, the impact bursting through the reinforced lens in a flash of molten glass and flesh as the man crumpled without a sound.
Another Mandalorian charged, vibroblade humming as he tried to close the distance. Anakin stepped into him, severing the man's arm at the shoulder in a single, clean cut between the armor plates before following through in the same fluid motion to cleave through his midsection, the body folding around the blade as if the heat itself had hollowed him out, and then, with a twist of his wrist, Anakin drove the saber up beneath the man's helmet, the red glow spilling from the seams of the beskar before the corpse slumped away into the ash.
The last Mandalorian stumbled back, scrambling for cover behind a nearby crate as he fired wildly, the shots hissing and cracking against the rocks around Anakin's feet, but fear had already claimed him and Anakin felt it, tasted it in the Force like copper on his tongue.
He extended his hand again, fingers curling slowly as if grasping an invisible throat. The Mandalorian was wrenched from behind his cover, lifted into the air with a strangled cry as his limbs flailed uselessly against the unseen grip that crushed his chest.
Anakin did not even pause as he walked past the man's dangling form, the lava flows casting wild, flickering light across the Mandalorian's visor as he struggled, and when Anakin flicked his hand aside the body arced helplessly out over the molten river, vanishing into the incandescent glow with a final, cut-off scream as the lava swallowed him whole.
The clones advanced in his wake, methodically clearing the perimeter, but Anakin barely registered them as he turned his attention toward the looming foundry complex ahead, its massive doors rimed with soot and glowing faintly from the heat within.
He strode toward it without hesitation, cloak snapping in the furnace wind, eyes reflecting the blue of his blade and the orange of the lava.
The march toward the command spire became a slaughter, a winding gauntlet of steel, fire, and screaming alarms as the clones advanced through the foundry halls.
Conveyor belts dragging half-formed weapons and armor past pools of molten metal while servitors and Imperium troops alike turned in shock at the sudden eruption of violence, only to be cut down in flashes of blasterfire and blue light. Anakin moved at the spearpoint of the assault, a dark comet tearing through the choking haze of ash and steam. His blade rose and fell in relentless arcs that left bodies in his wake, severed limbs sliding across the scorched floor, the heat of Mustafar merging with the heat of his fury until the air itself seemed to warp around him.
And though clones fell in ragged heaps under heavy fire and turret emplacements that chewed through white armor as if it were paper, he did not slow. He did not look back, did not flinch as men who had followed him only moments before were torn apart in sprays of red and burning plastoid, their deaths feeding the storm that swelled inside his chest.
He reached out again and again with the Force, crushing gun emplacements inward until their barrels twisted like soft clay. He hurled defenders from gantries into the lava pits below, tearing blast doors from their hinges to expose squads of Imperium troops who had thought themselves secure.
As the bodies piled, something in him expanded, an answering roar to the world's own fury, the dark side pouring into him in waves that made his limbs feel light, his movements effortless, his vision sharp and merciless as if every living thing before him were already marked for death.
By the time the great doors of the main spire loomed before him, their surface etched with sigils of the Imperium, the clones behind him were reduced to a scattered, battered remnant, their ranks thinned by heavy weapons fire and ambushes from elevated walkways. But Anakin did not pause to acknowledge the losses, instead lifting his hand and wrenching the doors apart with a thunderous shriek of metal, stepping through the billowing smoke and heat.
A lone Astartes stood waiting within, helm lenses burning like cold stars as he regarded Anakin in absolute silence. His bolter was mag-locked at his side and a massive power sword held low. For a heartbeat they regarded one another, and then the Astartes moved, closing the distance with shocking speed for something so massive, power sword screaming to life as it cleaved toward Anakin's head in a downward arc meant to end the fight in a single, decisive stroke.
Anakin met the blow with his lightsaber, the impact ringing through the chamber like a struck bell as blue and crackling energy collided, the force of the Astartes' swing driving sparks from the floor beneath Anakin's boots, yet he did not yield, instead letting the dark side surge through him, swelling his muscles with unnatural strength as he twisted his wrists and redirected the blade aside before darting in close, his saber flashing toward the Astartes' throat in a vicious counter that was turned away at the last instant by the marine's armored forearm.
The Astartes answered with a backhanded blow that would have crushed a normal man's skull, but Anakin leaned into the Force, his body blurring as he slipped past the strike and drove his blade across the marine's chest, the lightsaber biting into ceramite and leaving a molten scar that hissed and smoked but did not fully pierce the armor, the smell of superheated metal filling the air.
The Astartes roared then, the first sound he had made. He surged forward with a flurry of blows that battered at Anakin's defenses, each strike of the power sword heavy enough to split a speeder in half, each impact sending tremors through Anakin's arms and shoulders as he parried and twisted away, boots skidding across the scorched floor while sparks and fragments of molten stone flew around them.
Anakin let the fury build, drew deeper still, feeling the dark side coil around his spine and pour into his limbs until the world seemed to slow, the Astartes' movements stretching into readable arcs of intent and muscle, and with a snarl of effort he met the next crushing blow head-on, not deflecting but catching it, locking blades and shoving forward with strength that should not have belonged to a man of his size, driving the Astartes back step by grinding step.
With a violent gesture, Anakin unleashed the Force point-blank, the invisible blast slamming into the Astartes like a siege hammer, hurling the massive warrior across the chamber to crash into a pillar of blackened durasteel. The structure buckling around him with a shriek of metal as the marine slumped momentarily amid the wreckage.
Anakin was on him in an instant, blade flashing as he carved through the Astartes' bolter at the grip before the marine could bring it to bear, then driving forward again, his saber plunging into the already weakened breastplate, this time punching through with a burst of molten ceramite and searing light. The Astartes staggered, one gauntleted hand coming up as if to strike even in death, but Anakin wrenched his blade free and swept it across the marine's helm in a final brutal arc.
The body fell with a thunderous crash, the echo rolling through the spire as the last defender of the Imperium command structure lay broken at Anakin's feet, steam rising from the ruined armor as lava-light flickered across the scene.
Anakin stood over the corpse, chest rising and falling slowly, in grim satisfaction. The dark side still roared through his veins, swelling him with power until he felt larger than the chamber itself, untouched by the violence he had wrought, unmarked by the blows that should have crushed him.
===
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