Chapter Text
“He should have woken up by now, shouldn’t he?” Obi-Wan kept his voice quiet, standing with Yoda in the medical bay and looking down at the quiet, still form of Mace Windu. Killer of the last Master of the Sith, and capturer of one who would be his apprentice…but Obi-Wan flinched away from that idea.
“Should, hm? Little patience, has the Force, for such absolutes. Hmph. Should. Awaken or not, he will. Trust in the Force, we must,” Yoda scolded lightly, softened by the downturn of his ears and the gentle claw on Mace’s hand before it moved to Obi-Wan’s arm, turning him away.
“So we’re the only two left on the Council.” It was a sobering thought, and Obi-Wan pulled his robe closer. “What happens now?”
“Follow the will of the Force, we will. Jedi, we still are. An Order, we still have,” Yoda said, nodding, then looked up at him. “And know already, you do, what our next duty is.”
Yoda had known Obi-Wan since he was a toddling crecheling, sneaking out after dark for treats or to avoid nightmares. He’d been there when Obi-Wan had come back with his first kyber crystal and a dream being a Knight, and he’d been there when he’d returned after Naboo with his second, grieving and afraid. He’d seen Obi-Wan grow from a boy to a man, and now, they were among a scattered handful of survivors of genocide. In the face of that, his tears were nothing, and he felt a familiar clawed hand settle on his knee as he closed his eyes against the dampness on his cheeks.
“I can’t do it,” he said, his voice cracking. “He is like my brother. I can’t.”
“Gone, the boy you trained may be,” Yoda offered, and the Force wrapped around Obi-Wan to try and gentle the harsh ring of truth in the words. “A duty to him, you still have. Turn away now, an injustice to him, it is. An injustice to yourself, it is, Obi-Wan.” He was quiet as Obi-Wan covered his face with his hands, sinking against the wall until he was sitting in an empty hallway. Yoda went over and put both claws over Obi-Wan’s hands. His green eyes were gentle but steady. “An oath, you swore, Master Kenobi. Call upon you to honor it, I do.” A warm claw, pushing back a strand of red hair. “Sorry, I am, young Obi-Wan.”
“Me too, Master.” He didn’t pull his hands away yet, and Yoda gave him time, his Force presence open and inviting.
Emotion, yet peace . He drew a shaky breath. He had carried grief before ( Cerasi-Bruck-Qui-Gon-Satine-my friends-my men-myself), and it had not broken him. He knew how to carry this heavier burden, too. He would find his peace within his pain.
Ignorance, yet knowledge . He didn’t understand why people found it so easy to betray him. Cody, the entire 212th. Anakin . He would have died for them, and they had all thrown it away for no reason that he could see. I cannot control their actions, he reminded himself, drawing a shaky breath. I can not know their reasons. I only have the knowledge I have. He knew his oath. He knew his duty. He knew his code. He knew, for all that it broke his heart, the path forward.
Passion, yet serenity. Anger was an insidious thing. It started justified, contained, and then it licked along your veins, into your mind. Soon, it tainted everything. Soon, all you knew was rage, if you didn’t quiet it at the source. So he found the source ( pain and injustice, and it wasn’t fair ) and took a breath, releasing it. His rage served no purpose here, and would bring no justice. Only serenity would do that. Rage would only corrupt him, poison him into hurting others just so he wouldn’t be alone. He would not become that.
He would not become the monster he trained.
Chaos, yet harmony . The old order was gone. Perhaps, the old way of things had died with 66, or earlier, Geonosis. Perhaps it had started crumbling when a nine-year-old boy had stood before the Council and told them he was afraid. Now, it was in pieces around them, the Force surging like the crests of a storm. Yet, past that, Obi-WAn felt something new beginning. From the chaos and grief, they were finding who they could be. From the chaos, a new harmony would rise.
Death, yet the Force . Depa. Kit. Adi. Aayla. Plo. Ki-Adi. My friends. I am sorry. March ahead, so we may follow. Find the peace you fought so hard to preserve. We will meet again, someday. Their lives left something missing in the Force, bonds that had been bright and strong now broken and lost. Yet past that, he could feel all the lives they had touched. Lives they had saved. Their influence still echoed out, ripples in the pond. Nobody is ever really gone. To honor them and the light they served, he would do his duty. He owed them, and himself, nothing less.
He opened his eyes, still red-rimmed and damp, but clear. Yoda looked at him, then nodded. “To the Chambers, we go. Justice, we will determine, for Sidious’s apprentice.”
They had him in an inhibitor. Obi-Wan knew he should have expected it. Anakin was the most powerful Force Sensitive of their generation. He had the power of a small sun, and without inhibitors, they couldn’t hold him. More than that, he knew how to get out of the bracelets.
I never taught you how to get out of a collar. I never wanted to tell you how I learned , Obi-Wan thought, watching the Shadows half-drag the shade of a man into the chamber. The sound of his knees hitting the floor echoed dully, his ragged breaths amplified. If I had taught you, what would you have done? If we had nothing to hold you at bay, how many of us would you kill?
The Shadows stepped out. The doors slammed shut. The trial was in session. Obi-Wan’s hands were white-knuckled, inside his robes. My brother. My student. My padawan. How could I have failed you so ? The next words to be said were ancient. Obi-Wan knew them by heart.
They should have been said by the Master of the Order.
The Master of the Order was in a coma. This man, and the monster he’d nearly sworn himself to, had put him there.
Obi-Wan spoke instead. My student. My responsibility. “Knight Skywalker.” Anakin jerked his head up, glaring. Hatred spilled out into the chamber, rage. Pain. “You stand accused of betraying your vows. You have turned your saber against the innocent. You have used the Force to cause pain and death. Had you not been stopped, you would have violated even the sacred halls of our home with suffering and death.” Hadn’t you seen enough of it, these past three years? Weren’t you tired of the killing? Or did it just whet your appetite?
How long have you been a monster, my brother? How blind have I been?
“How do you answer these charges?” A laugh, horrible and demented, echoed around the chamber. Obi-Wan thought of the Brother, so long ago, on Mortis. Is this what they warned me of? Is this what you saw, that they had to take from you?
“What is this, Obi-Wan?” the one who had once been his brother mocked, tossing his limp hair back from his face. Wild eyes stared up at him, turbulent as the seas of Kamino. “Why bother to even give me a trial, hm? If that’s what this is. A mockery of justice. Just execute me. I’ll finally be out of the way. You don’t have to keep being overshadowed by me. Afraid of me, of my potential.”
This isn’t Anakin . Oh, there were echoes. Pride, desperation, it was there. But this was not the boy he trained. This was Sidious’s creation. Obi-Wan took a slow breath, his shoulders drawn back. He would do what he must. He would remain, above all else, a Jedi.
“Kill our prisoners, Jedi do not. Kill you, we will not, young Skywalker,” Yoda said quietly. “Answer these charges, do you?”
“Oh, right, right. How about you just kick me to the curb, like you did with Ahsoka? Then the Senate can have me. You want to know how I answer your kriffing charges ?” Anakin spit on the floor, fury lining his face. “The only thing I regret is that you stopped me. The entire Order deserves to die. You’re a bunch of lying hypocrites who think love is evil and destroy families. I want you all to burn . So hand me over to the Senate, if you’re too cowardly to kill me yourself.”
Ignorance, yet Knowledge . He would forever carry guilt for his complicity in Ahsoka’s fate. But he would not forget the knowledge he gained then.
“No.” It was quiet, firm, and rang with authority in the Force. “You are a Jedi. You committed your crimes as a Jedi, you were captured as a Jedi, and you remain a member of this Order. The Senate has no authority here.” They will never have authority in this Chamber again , Obi-Wan thought grimly, and he knew Yoda had caught the thought. You harbored our greatest enemy and sent our children to die on foreign battlefields, far from home, shot down by those they called friends.
The Senate will never command us again.
“You do not deny these charges.” Obi-Wan looked down at him, seething and broken upon Sidious’s will, and felt…grief, yes. Sorrow. Pain. But most of all, a profound sort of pity. “You betrayed us. You betrayed my teachings.”
“They weren’t enough!” It was an unholy shriek, and Anakin threw himself to his feet. Obi-Wan and Yoda remained still, the Force moving around them in case he attacked. “None of it was! I was going to lose her! Just like I lost my mother! Now you’ve killed the only person that might have saved her! I hate you! I hate all of you! You kept me from true power and now she’ll die and it’s all your fault !”
Obi-Wan closed his eyes. Attachment. The bane of their lineage, brought home to roost. “Padme. You saw Padme’s death,” he said, quietly, and his heart ached for them both. Both his friends. Both so young. “He promised you he could save her. That’s why you betrayed us all. For her.” One life, in exchange for thousands. To Anakin, that would always be a fair trade, because it was one life he valued, against thousands who meant nothing to him.
That Obi-Wan was counted in the number of those who did not matter was just a papercut beside the gaping hole of his heart.
“I am going to save her . I am more powerful than any Jedi. I will learn to stop death itself. You won’t stop me,” Anakin raved. Obi-Wan watched him, and Yoda watched him, and the Force keened its grief.
“I failed you, my friend. I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan said, quietly, to whatever fragment of Anakin might be left, and the twisted grief in the younger man’s eyes flickered, startled. “I am sorry, Anakin.”
Yoda got out of his chair, going over to Anakin and staring in his eyes. Anakin held his gaze for a few moments, then dropped his head, a coarse sob leaving his lips. “I didn’t know what else to do,” he whispered, ragged, as he dropped to his knees again. “I can’t lose her.”
“Oh, young Skywalker,” Yoda sighed, setting one claw on Anakin’s head. It was like Anakin’s strings had been cut, leaving him slumped and breathing in ragged, sobbing breaths. “Failed you, we all did. Twisted by Sidious’s manipulations, you were. Killed younglings, do you wish to? Hm? Kill Master Kenobi, would you?”
“ No .” Anakin looked up, his eyes wide and horrified. “No, I wouldn’t–he said the Jedi , but he–he knows that Obi-Wan–he wouldn’t–the younglings .”
“That would have been his next order. His first was…” Obi-Wan swallowed hard. It still stung, that three years of loyalty meant nothing. “Cody shot me down, Anakin. Palpatine was never going to spare me,” Obi-Wan said quietly, and Anakin shook his head.
“No. No . You were–you were supposed to join us. Once I, once I had a chance to explain, you would–” Ice spread through Obi-Wan’s chest. You were supposed to join us . As if he could ever kneel before the monster that slaughtered his family.
“I would die first. I would die, before I would ever give loyalty to a Sith. Palpatine knew that.” Obi-Wan swallowed. “So do you.” Anakin looked away, his features crumbling as rage buckled beneath fear and grief. The shields of his mind fell away, and the last Masters of the High Council saw his mind for what it was. Saw the wounds poisoned and torn by darkness. Saw years of manipulations, laid bare.
“Obi-Wan, I…I’m sorry ,” Anakin said, looking up at his master with clear blue eyes. “I just…I didn’t know what else to do . I can’t lose her. I can’t . She’s–she’s the only one who’s just mine .”
Just mine . Because Obi-Wan had always belonged to the Order first. Because Anakin had never liked sharing.
Because Obi-Wan had failed to teach his student how to let go , and left him easy prey to a Sith’s poison. He gripped tightly at his robes, words turning to sand as he realized the depths of his failure, and found he had nothing to say in the face of the wounds in Anakin’s mind.
“Lied to, you were. Manipulated, we all were, for years,” Yoda sighed into the large, echoing chamber, words falling into the silence between student and master. “A true choice, make not, did you, hm? No. Twisted by the Sith, your mind was. Yet light, there still is.” He nodded, looking to Obi-Wan. “Take him, I will. Draw out the Sith’s poison, we will. To Dagobah, we will go. Exile, until in the light, he is.”
Obi-Wan could already see the outcry. Anakin had stood by while so many of their brothers and sisters were cut down. He had sided with the Sith. He had Fallen . Why should he get mercy when he offered none to anyone else? He had his life; was that not enough?
But we are Jedi. Luminous beings are we . We walk in the light, and choose mercy over vengeance. Always.
And it’s Anakin .
“So be it,” he said, quietly, and there was a feeling like thread, pulling together the torn weave of the universe. This is how healing starts. “You will go to Dagobah. Master Yoda will determine when your exile ends.”