"I'm not the Jedi Order, but what I want is to know that you have made every effort to ensure that there will not be another vengeful massacre.  I'd be a hypocrite if I said that killing the people who did all that to your mother was entirely wrong, because they did do quite a bit of harm with malice aforethought, but...

"You are the sort of power that can shape the galaxy, Anakin Skywalker.  Do you want the galaxy entire to be a place of vengeance, or do you want it to be just?"

She can work on mercy later.

He winces. That black night on Tatooine feels like it happened to someone else, most of the time. It's easy to pretend it never did. They don't talk about it. 

"I don't know who you are but - it doesn't matter what I want. The Council will never let me stay."

"Even if that's true, that makes what you want more important, not less. You'd be living your own life, if you left the Order."

In truth, she's worried. Her husband is a good person but he needs somewhere for it to go, needs to be out saving people and fighting for something, he is a deeply angry man and she worries about what would become of him if he weren't a Jedi. 

But it's not the only way, it never has been, and they're far beyond anything either of them imagined now. 

He makes a fist and his mechanical hand creaks under the strain. 

He could, what, track down Ahsoka and ask how she deals with it? Follow Padmé around like a lost puppy? Be the galaxy's scariest mercenary for no reason?

"Oh, don't be so fatalist.  What you want matters.  It might not be an entirely overriding consideration, but it matters.  Notwithstanding that I'm fairly sure that it's more like the Council won't let go of you unless they're certain you're in good hands.

"...Hah.  Oh, I shouldn't, truly, but I had hubris enough back in my day and it's hardly abated since.  But it would be so irritating to that kriffing asswipe who calls himself Darth Sidious, and we know your passions run deep.

"Just as there is such a thing as a Dark Jedi, there can be such a thing as a Light Sith.  I would be remiss to not make an offer to teach you how to control your passions, in the wake of this - lest they be used again to control you.  Whether the Council would agree with me on whether that's a good idea?  Only the Force knows, I suppose, and it's not yet told me - but the offer's there, nonetheless.  ...I think you might benefit from a different perspective, no matter what you seek for after."

There's no way in hell the Council is going to go for this. Not for him. Everything feels wrong, Chancellor Palpatine is gone, everyone knows about him and Padme, the Sith are helping them now or something - 

He straightens. Think of it like a mission, everything's gone badly wrong and he doesn't understand, fine, he doesn't need to, what needs to get done - 

"I might just take you up on that. Thank you."

She quirks a grin at him.  "I'm glad to be able to help.  Pissing off Darth Sidious by luring the Knight he was trying to corrupt into heresy - by the Empire's and his standards, at least - is just a very tempting bonus."

"It's still hard to believe that Chancellor Palpatine was the Sith Lord."

"He was a very good actor.  I don't know if I'd have been able to keep so unimpeachably to a cover as dissonant to the person I actually was as that one, and I am to some degree specialized in infiltration.  Though I suppose he got to let his Darkness run loose on all the politicking."

"I guess politics is a dark art."

She goes to swat playfully at him but her hand is still sore despite everything, and she winces. 

"I'd be grateful if you could. This is going to be hard enough to navigate, and... I can't help but feel like we're being played for fools, here."

"We probably are, on some level, though I have the temerity to think I've at least posed a sizeable disruption even as he's made a mostly clean pivot into trying to coöpt the Chiss Ascendancy and there's apparently another threat from outside Known Space knocking on our doors again."