Disclaimer: I own none of the characters, ideas, etc., of Star Wars. You know the drill.
Summary: AU, PT. Humor. Even the smallest of things can change the course of the future. Palpatine finds this out the hard way.

Originally posted at AO3 on February 24, 2014.

The Pitfalls

At night on Coruscant, the stars could not be seen, so brightly did the endless city's lights shine throughout the hours. Palpatine supposed he did miss the glimmer of the stars, yet he little cared. Peeling a peach carefully with the little knife he kept hidden in his sleeve, he thought of the freckled night sky that showed over his family's ancient estate on Naboo. As a child, he had looked to the stars and wanted to clutch them all in his hand.

Amusing, how these thoughts came to him now, on the eve of his great triumph. He flicked the last of the peel into the composter with the tip of the knife. The juices from the peach stained his wrist. Soon, they would stain his sleeve as well. He bit into the fruit. It was firm, not yet over-ripe, and tart on his tongue. Palpatine took another bite, his teeth cleaving neatly through the flesh.

The war continued apace, though he thought it best if hostilities should end soon. Tyranus, like Maul before him, had proved too disposable a thing. Yes, it would be soon. Young Anakin Skywalker showed such promise, and he'd none of the ingrained honor that so plagued Dooku even now. Skywalker married in secret, what an unexpected boon, and to Senator Amidala. Palpatine could never have planned so sweet a trap, and yet how neatly Anakin had fallen into it.

Palpatine stepped on to the balcony that connected to his senator's office. It was a warm night on Coruscant, a sweltering night, and the air, even so high up as his office, stank of exhaust and the filthy bodies of all the many millions of persons crowded into the First Quarter of the great city planet. He luxuriated in the heat and the stink, considering the stars he could not see. Now the peach was half gone, and he continued to eat it, taking larger, hungrier bites.

Skywalker would do very well. He was impressionable, arrogant, already at odds with the morality of his order, and so devoted to Amidala, that idealistic mountain girl from Naboo. The war had served its purpose. The Republic, already stressed, had begun to fracture; the Jedi Order was splintering though it did not yet realize how deeply the cracks ran. He supposed Tyranus had served Palpatine well enough. To give the Sith a face had amply distracted the Jedi. They chased the apprentice, thinking him the master, and Palpatine remained at the senate, solidifying his power as chancellor. Chancellor now, but soon:

"Emperor," he murmured, reveling in the feel of it on his teeth, the sound of it on his lips. Palpatine took a victorious bite from the peach and, chewing only once, he swallowed it.

Something caught in his throat. He took a breath, a very shallow breath, very strained, all of it around whatever it was that had caught. He thumped his chest and swallowed again, but the thing had shifted. He could not breathe. Thumping again at his chest, then a third time, Palpatine looked to the peach. It was a small lump, hardly two bites left. If it were the flesh trapped in his throat, surely he could dislodge it quickly—He turned the fruit over. The pit was gone.

Again he struck his chest, more violently. A mindless panic crept up his back. Again, again: he could not dislodge it. Frantically Palpatine threw the peach aside and tried to call out to the guard outside his door, but he had no voice. He grappled at his throat and then thought of the intercom at his desk. It had a panic button, hadn't it? He'd never had cause to use it, but it must exist. He struggled to get to his desk, but the world was darkening around the edges; small stars began to reach out to him.

He was nearly at his desk when he swooned. The stars clutched him; then the darkness took him; and then Darth Sidious was only Palpatine and Palpatine was dead, the pit of the peach wedged perfectly in his throat where it would remain for several hours, till the coroner would extract it with a pair of tweezers and cluck her tongue at how it just went to show, politicians were greedy in just about everything.

Anakin reached for her. Padmé, engrossed in corrections, had thought him long asleep, and so when he touched her arm, she shrieked and hit him across the head with the tablet.

"Oh, Anakin!" she said. The relief that gushed through her fell aside. "Oh, Anakin—"

He was clutching at his head with one hand. The other, his prosthetic hand, had closed tightly around her arm though not so tightly as to hurt her. He was always so cautious with that hand.

"It's all right," he said, "you didn't hit me that hard—"

Tossing the tablet to the foot of the bed, she said, "Well, the screen cracked at least," and brushed his hand from his brow. She smoothed her thumb over the faint creases there, rubbing them out, and she stooped to kiss the scar at the corner of his eyebrow, where it ran to bisect his eyelid.

"I don't think your skull has cracked," she said, kissing the other eyebrow for good measure. "You did startle me."

"I noticed," said Anakin. He was smiling, and when she made to pull back, he caught her shoulder with his flesh hand and held her so he might return the favor, his mouth warm on hers. His lips moved slowly—he had been asleep—and the tip of his tongue was very dry.

"Your heart is racing," she whispered into the kiss. She'd covered his breast with her hand, her fingers splayed out across the bare skin. "What is it?"

He sighed and rested his banged forehead against her significantly less abused brow.

"I had a dream," Anakin said.

Padmé brushed his jawline. "About your mother?"

He moved to kiss her cheek, very gently. "No. I don't think so. I can't remember it now, but it wasn't my mother."

"I hope it wasn't me," Padmé said, lightly so he'd reassure them both.

Instead, Anakin was quiet for a long moment. "I think you were in it," he said at last, "but it's gone now, whatever it was."

He had reached over for her, after all, as if he'd needed the comfort, to remind himself that Padmé was there. And she'd cracked her tablet's screen on his head.

"Well," said Padmé, "I'm here now. So whatever happened in that dream, let it go. It can't have been important if you've forgot it."

"I guess not," he allowed.

Anakin slipped back down and Padmé, relinquishing her tablet pen to the bedside table, followed him. His shoulder was strong, strong and now so very familiar to her. She always missed him when he went away, and yet it seemed as if she never truly understood how profoundly she longed for him until he was with her again. Softly Padmé stroked his belly.

"I wish the war would end," Padmé said. "For so many reasons, of course, but I must admit, I'm rather selfish in my priorities. I hate it when you go away."

"If it does end," said Anakin, "it'll be thanks to you much more than it is to me."

Padmé laughed and dropped a kiss to his shoulder. "That's very flattering. I'm touched the famed Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker has such faith in me."

"You'll be touched in other ways by famed Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker if you don't stop," he threatened.

She kissed him again and again, making her way to his throat. All the while she moved her hand lower and lower, then all the way up to his chest again to tweak his nipple in a tease. Usually he would play the rake at such a challenge, but this time he only caught her face in his long fingers and bent to kiss her thoroughly.

"What is it?" she asked him again, when they were done.

"I'm not sure," he said, tasting the corner of her mouth and then the corner opposite. "It's only, I have the strangest feeling that something wonderful has just happened, and everything will be all right soon."

"Oh, no, Anakin," said Padmé, as if she could not bear to break the terrible news, "that's just my hand," and then he did throw his arm about her waist and throw her beneath him while she shouted his name, laughing so she could hardly breathe. He did so enjoy taking her breath away, and she enjoyed it just as well.

She thought, yes, everything would be all right, and the strange thing was, she believed it utterly, as if some powerful unease inside her had been put quietly to rest. Her hopes were as numerous as the stars and the future as unknowable, and yet she knew they would be all right, all of them, Anakin and Padmé and the little one just now growing inside her, and all the rest of the galaxy, though she could not say how she knew it. She only did. Faith was enough.

News of the chancellor's death spread swiftly throughout the galaxy. Count Dooku heard of it within the week. A peculiar grief knotted in his chest, and slowly he unwound it. It was only the years he had spent in faith to Sidious that left him so oddly bereft. He paced the vaulted dais, never minding the stars outside the long, thick windows, never minding the shadows moving along the steep stairs as the ship continued its course.

By the end of the hour, Dooku was convinced Palpatine's death was the will of the force. Sidious had been too slow, too weak-willed to truly serve the dark side. As Dooku suspected, he had grown too engrossed in his meandering game of sabacc with the Republic. Yes. Yes, this was as it should be: the era of Sidious had ended. Tyranus was now the master. His shoulders now bore the duty, the needs that demanded the Jedi be held accountable for their monopoly upon the force.

"Yes," he said aloud to the empty room, "now is the time of Darth Tyranus," and he turned sharply on his heel, thinking of all he would have to attend to and soon. He had forgotten where he stood, so close to the edge of the dais, and his foot punched down farther than he'd expected. Dooku slipped and tumbled down the stairs. His last thought was Oh, shit, are you serious?

"Most strange," said Master Yoda to Master Mace Windu. "The force, reeling."

"Yes," said Windu, "I feel it as well. As though…"

Kenobi, standing with them in consideration of a great star chart, nodded.

"As though suddenly countless voices cried out in joy," he said, "and then grew louder."

"Most strange," said Yoda again, very thoughtfully. "The urge to dance, I feel. Know any sick moves, do you?"