Chapter Text
Obi-Wan Kenobi kneels in the mire, his knees sinking into the mud as though the planet itself would claim him, drag him under to rest among its dead.
The broken forms of clone troopers lie scattered like discarded chess pieces, their lives spent in service of a Republic that may not even mourn them.
The mud grips his knees like a vice, cold and sucking, wanting him buried. Obi-Wan Kenobi doesn’t bother to pull free. He can feel the weight of death pressing down on him, heavier than his armor, heavier than the lightsaber hilt digging into his palm. Here are no more orders, no rallying cries, no desperate calls for reinforcements. Only the droids remain, their metal feet crunching over shattered bodies, their weapons raised.
This is how it ends, then.
His lungs burn, his chest heaving from exertion and smoke, every breath a fight. The Force hums faintly in the back of his mind, distant, like a melody he once knew by heart.
And yet, he holds.
The Jedi do not retreat. They do not falter. They do not fear death.
A lie, whispers the voice of his breaking spirit.
Chancellor Valorum’s orders ring in his ears, the hollow echo of duty that has led him here. To this. To death. He will die gladly, he tells himself, if it means the Republic survives. His life is worth nothing if it spares the millions who depend on him. But as the droids raise their blasters, their weapons trained on his kneeling form, a terrible thought takes root—a poisoned seed planted deep within the soil of his resolve.
"I want to live."
The words are quiet, almost inaudible, but the Force hears him. It always hears. The thought is not his, and yet it is—it tears through him like a thunderclap.
This is how it ends, then.
He lowers his head, waiting for the inevitable, as crimson bolts of plasma cut through him. His body jolts as the shots find their mark, pain splintering through him like glass shattering inside his veins.
And then—silence.
He is no longer on the battlefield.
He floats in a void where time and space collapse into themselves, a place where stars are born and die in the same breath. It is neither dark nor light but a shifting, swirling thing—a liminal space that presses against the edges of his mind. The Force hums here, ancient and omnipotent, but it feels cold, unfeeling, indifferent to his suffering.
Before him stands a figure cloaked in shadow, its form a twisting absence of light.
Everything around it ripples, the space itself bending in its presence. Its voice is a blade wrapped in velvet, cutting and soft all at once.
“Do you mean it, Kenobi?” the shadow asks. “Do you truly want to live, or would you rather die and never see him again?”
“Who?” Obi-Wan croaks, though he already knows.
The shadow laughs, and it sounds like breaking bones. “Anakin Skywalker. Your greatest sin.”
Obi-Wan’s breath catches, the name a wound reopened. He does not know where he is, does not even know if he is still alive, but he feels that name like a hand around his throat.
Anakin. The reason for his fall, his salvation, his destruction. The senator who dared to love a Jedi, who pulled him into a forbidden affair that violated every tenet of the Code. The man who made him feel alive for the first time and now threatens to destroy him with that same fire.
“I will always find him,” Obi-Wan says, his voice trembling. “No matter where I am, no matter what happens, I will always return to Anakin.”
The shadow’s grin is a crescent of darkness, a chasm filled with mockery. “Are you willing to pay the price?”
Obi-Wan swallows hard, his hands trembling. “What price?”
“Sacrifice all you know and love, and you will survive this day. Fail, and you will die here, forgotten in a sea of droid parts. No one will mourn you. No one will remember you.”
The thought of losing Anakin is unthinkable. But the thought of dying, of leaving Anakin alone - that is unbearable.
“I will always find him,” Obi-Wan whispers to himself, as if saying it aloud makes it true. “Even if I must lose him now.”
“Is that your answer?” the shadow asks.
“Yes,” Obi-Wan says, his voice breaking. “Yes. I want to live. No matter the cost.”
The shadow’s laughter fills the void, echoing endlessly, as the battlefield begins to fade back into view. But something has changed.
He feels it, deep in his soul—the price he will pay.
Somewhere far away, he knows, Anakin Skywalker stirs in his sleep, as if something precious has just been ripped away.
***
The name Obi-Wan feels like a whisper through static now, barely discernible, a tune hummed in a dream he can’t recall.
His mind is fogged, not by the passage of time but by something denser, more viscous, like tar. Memories flit like shadows behind his eyelids, too quick to grasp. There is the crack of blaster fire, the dull thud of his body hitting dirt, and then—nothing. Only darkness and the certainty of a betrayal too vast to understand.
Now there is this: a table, cold as indifference, pressing into the curve of his back. It leeches warmth from him, and perhaps that is why he feels so hollow. Or maybe it’s the wound—a yawning chasm in his chest that exposes the fragile red mess of who he is. Was. The air smells of antiseptic and burned flesh. His flesh.
Something tugs inside him—a sharp, invasive thing—and his nerve endings scream, but he cannot. They’ve numbed him. Drugged him. Reduced him to a vessel of failing tissue and bones. The pain exists, though, like a storm roiling at the edges of a muted sky. He clings to it, because it is proof that he is still alive.
Alive.
The thought settles, jagged and alien. Shouldn’t he be dead?
He remembers enough to know it was meant to end. He was meant to end. The fall—it was written in the blood pooling beneath him on some forgotten battlefield. The droids had aimed true. He had felt the heat of their shots tearing into his body, the iron taste of death in his mouth. And yet, here he is.
A flicker of something that might be rage—or perhaps grief—stirs within him.
The machine begins to hum inside his chest, nestled under his ribs.
When he wakes, he does not feel like a man. His limbs are heavy, the edges of his consciousness jagged as glass. A pressure pushes at his chest, unnatural and mechanical. The steady, rhythmic churn of it is deafening in its monotony. He does not have to look to know. He feels it, cold and unyielding, where something warm and soft once was.
His heart.
They’ve taken it.
He’s still breathing, though—this new heart pumps his blood, keeps him alive. But the blood feels wrong in his veins, sluggish and unfamiliar. The Force, once a river flowing through him, now stutters and falters like a dying breath. The machine gives him life but denies him everything else. He is a body with no spirit. A husk.
And somewhere in the recesses of his mind, but no longer in this machine of a heart, there is a name that used to ring ‘beloved.’
There is Anakin. Anakin, with his fierce grin and his bright, reckless eyes. Anakin, whose love burned hotter than any star Obi-Wan had ever known. Anakin, whose loyalty still echoes like thunder in the silence of his thoughts.
He tries to reach for the memory of him, but it slips away, elusive and cruel. What remains is a deep, aching void where Anakin once lived. A love that had burned quietly, secretly, in the fragile, forbidden space between them. A love that this cold, mechanical thing in his chest cannot mimic or rekindle.
The machine hums steadily, uncaring. And Obi-Wan, or whoever he is now, lies there, his humanity unraveling thread by thread.