Author's Note: Sorry this chapter is very short, but it's just based on that second to last scene in the movie, and that isn't very lengthy, so this isn't, either. Still, I hope you find something enjoyable in it, ladies and gentlemen.

Epilogue: The End of the Beginning

Two days later, I stood beside Master Windu in the Council chamber of the somber Jedi Temple, which was now thick with Jedi contemplating the loss of their friends and colleagues and wondering how things could have come to galactic warfare for the first time in millennia― debating inwardly what our generation had done so wrong to render us the first in a thousand years to be engaging in a civil war. We were by the window, staring out over the businesses and conapts of Coruscant.

As I gazed out the transparisteel, I mused on how simultaneously familiar and foreign the planetwide city appeared to me. For the most part, it was identical to the Coruscant I had known like the palm of my hand since childhood. The airtaxis still whizzed through the lanes without any regard for anyone else, the traffic was as congested as ever, the neon holoadvertisements were as bright in their false promises to the gullible as ever, and the airbuses were, as always, packed with commuters returning to their domiciles after a stressful and demanding day at the office. On the surface, it seemed like nothing much had changed, except for the titles of the latest holovees that were flashing in the holosigns.

Yet, I knew differently. Just as the blood red sun was setting now to end another bustling day for this ecumenopolis, an era in galactic history had ended. Where once peace and culture had reigned supreme, aggression and ignorance would prevail until dawn broke out again in all its incandescent splendor.

To me, nothing heralded the alteration more clearly than the only truly visible change on Coruscant since the melee of Geonosis: the stationing of clone troopers in their smooth white armor in the capitol of the Republic. Even though I was aware that the soldiers were here to protect the civilians in the case of terrorist attacks by Separatist sympathizers or an actual assault on the world, their presence disquieted me, and not just because they were a reminder of the vicious battle of Geonosis and all the Jedi who had not returned from it. No, the clones upset me since they were emblems of warfare, and the idea of warfare striking Coruscant, the heart and icon of civilization, rendered me noxious.

However, it seemed that most beings on Coruscant were not nearly as disconcerted by the clones as I was. Most of the general populace conducted their daily routines and hardly spared a second glance for the newcomers, ignoring them as thoroughly as they did the security holocameras in malls.

As for the politicians, the Senate as a whole appeared to regard the troopers as a blessing, since, not only did they mean that there would be no need to recruit or draft massive numbers of citizens, they also were an already perfectly trained army that could be employed on any front against the Separatists. Therefore, they tended to endorse the deployment of clone troops on Coruscant, since, allegedly, they made the civilians feel more secure. Personally, because it seemed to me that the citizens of this high-tech, cosmopolitan world paid the clone soldiers less mind than they did the duracete pathways they strode through the urban center upon, I surmised that the clone troopers actually soothed the delicate nerves of many a statesperson, who then displaced their relief on the general Coruscanti population.

Still, that fact really did not matter all that much. Soon, as more fronts were opened across the galaxy, the number of soldiers stationed here would inevitably have to decrease, unless the Kaminoans knew how to make new troopers in less than ten years time, which I doubted.

A second later, I recognized the callousness of my own ruminations. Was it not dreadful enough that the other Jedi and I were going to utilize legions of clones in a galactic wide conflict who, in reality, were only a little over a decade old, and who had never experienced existence outside the precision of the military, and who had never had a choice about whether they wanted to fight and die for a Republic they had no stake in? Apparently, it wasn't. No, I had to ponder if it was possible to have even younger troopers that were still expertly trained out in the field being shot to gory pieces by blaster bolts and being exploded into oblivion by grenades.

After all, it would be so much more efficient if we didn't have to wait a few more years for our soldiers. Cruel to the clones, yes, but so much more practical and beneficial for the rest of us, so the unfortunate troopers de-sentientized with numbers, like droids, rather than names like sentients, had to be sacrificed on the altar of efficiency. That was probably how the Kaminoans had been thinking when they dabbled into cloning science and got buried in it so deeply that they could never escape it, even if they desired to, which they didn't.

Deciding that such contemplations were a distraction, I asked the question that had haunted the rear of my brain since my delightful exchange with Dooku in the dungeons of Geonosis, "Do you believe what Count Dooku said about Sidious controlling the Senate? It doesn't feel right."

It didn't. Granted, the Senate was mired in bureaucracy because it was suffering from a major brain drain as a majority of the galaxy's more intelligent youths shunned public service, causing the governing body of the Republic to have issues figuring out how to enact laws about health care benefits and welfare for the destitute, who starved while the legislature debated for hours about the best way, theoretically, to assist them, and argued vociferously about how many political demigods could fit on the pin of a needle. Somehow, as comforting as it would have been to blame this whole mound of poodoo on Sidious, I couldn't do so.

Every one of us was accountable for what had happened to our government, and we would all pay the price for it. Yet, reform was possible, and secession was not only a coward's pathway out of trouble and objectionable realities, it was also a flee into the suffocating embrace of the Sith, which nobody ever left alive anymore than they did the asphyxiating hug of lethal serpents on many planets spanning the galaxy.

"Become unreliable, Dooku has." Yoda sighed his disappointment about how far and fast one of his greatest pupils had fallen from his chair behind us before Mace Windu, who had opened his mouth to answer my inquiry, could reply. "Joined the Dark Side, he has. Lies, deceit, and creating mistrust are his ways now."

Listening to Master Yoda, I reflected that Dooku was quite skilled in forming glistening spider webs of falsehood and confusion to entrap the universe, so that he could gobble it up once he had ensnared it, and more was the pity for both the Republic and the Separatists, because I suspected that Dooku would offer no mercy to either of us once he had captured us in his deadly masterpiece.

"Nevertheless, I feel we should keep a closer eye on the Senate," maintained Master Windu grimly, raising a hand. Always wary for menaces, of course he would harbor such a sentiment.

"I agree." Yoda nodded his consent.

That matter having been settled as much as it could be at the moment, Mace pivoted to face me again. "Where is your apprentice?"

So the Council was already planning on sending us to fight in the war again. Well, that was no surprise, since there was no other reason except to receive a new assignment that I would be summoned here now.

"On his way to Naboo," I responded. "He is escorting Senator Amidala home."

Once again, all three of us lapsed into silence, and I imagined that we were all contemplating just how lucky we were that the Chosen One hadn't perished on Geonosis along with so many others. Still, even though it had cost the Jedi a gigantic sum, we had won that engagement, and I elected to lighten the mood a touch by reminding my companions of that small consolatory scrap of data.

"I have to admit that without the clones, it would not have been a victory," I commented.

"Victory?" echoed Yoda, jolting indignantly upright in his seat. "Victory, you say?" Whirling around, I saw Yoda glance around the almost-empty Council Chamber, and his ears droop in despair. Before I could answer and concede that a confrontation in which an enormous fraction of its combatants died counted only as a success in a technical sense, he added, "Master Obi-Wan, not victory. Only begun, this Clone Wars has."

Wow, he was able to dampen a meeting more rapidly than a monsoon on Drongar. Obviously, he did not subscribe to the doctrine that leaders were supposed to inspire those under their command with stirring remarks. Instead, he seemed to judge that it was prudent to establish candidly the plain truth, no matter how revolting it was, as he had in this case.

The Clone Wars had only just commenced, and the casualties that we had sustained so far were only a bitter sample of the losses that we would be reeling under for a long time. Violence would expand like a plague across the star systems of the galaxy. Governments would be overthrown, cities would burn, citizens would murder their neighbors in the name of political ideologues that they did not comprehend in efforts to gain more land or riches, and everywhere, death, carnage, blood, weapons, and brutality would dominate. Yet, into this mayhem and savagery, there would be glimpses of the nobler aspects of sentinets. Battle was a crucible that shoved into sharp relief the best elements in some individuals and the worst in others. Combat would bring out the heroism beings imbued with the righteousness of a worthy cause could attain, the devotion that permitted a man to lay down his lives for people that had become in the fire of conflict like his brothers, and the courage that permitted sentients to defy all odds to achieve victory.

Like the rest of the Jedi, Anakin and I would be embroiled in this nightmare that we would not be able to awaken from any time in the imminent future, and it would define us. I could only wait for it to do so and hope that it emphasized the better side of us. When Anakin returned to Coruscant, we would discover exactly what we consisted of, because war was ferocious and merciless, but it flensed out the truth and stripped away the façade, revealing the actual inner natures behind the masks that those who fought in it once had donned everyday. It was a mirror that indifferently reflected reality back at anyone who dared to stare into its face, and I hoped that I had the strength and bravery it required to come into contact with the unadorned truth without any of society's lies, since civilization and all its comforts vanished like a mirage once the battles began.