Chapter Text
“Anakin.”
His eyes open, when had he closed them? Obi-Wan? He'd heard the voice of his Maste– his...
He groans and shakes his head, no... his Master isn't Obi-Wan anymore. He's not Anakin. He's Vader. Darth... Vader...
“Anakin.”
Pain. It's... good. It is what gives him power.
“Anakin.”
“Stop!” Vader screams, clutching at his head. He can feel himself fracturing inside, the pain hurts. Grief, betrayal, regret, anger, bitter hate, and sorrow. But under it all, there's still something achingly sweet. Something soft, gentle, calling, longing, yearning.
He glares at the Kyber Crystal, the little green shard floating on the pedestal. The heart of the blade, the soul of a lightsaber, its soft yet powerful glow dancing off the cavern walls.
After everything he'd done, it dared tempt him back to his M– to Obi-Wan's side!? Dared give him this poisonous lie, that Obi-Wan would lower his blade, and call him Anakin. After Obi-Wan tried to kill him on Mustafar, after turning Padme against him. That Obi-Wan would forgive him for everything he's done. Take him back like some pathetic snivelling weak creature crawling on its knees for mercy!?
Vader wants to smash the crystal. Forget his mission to bleed a Jedi's Kyber Crystal, to pour his hate into it and break it, turn its green glow into the bloody broken red of the Sith. Kark the mission. He wants to destroy it. To shatter it, let it lie broken in the remains of its pathetic attempts to protect itself, to use his emotions to control him. Nobody controls Darth Vader.
This path he's on is all there is, all that's left to him. This is all the universe has ever seen fit to grant him. Suffering, pain, loss, betrayal, and misery.
Vader raises a hand towards it and a powerful pulse ripples through the Force, throbs through him.
“Anakin.”
“Aaaaarrrrhhhh!” He tears at his own hair, images flash through his mind without his permission. He feels a pull from the Kyber Crystal, as though it is dragging out the memories from the depths of his soul. He sees them, even though he doesn't want to look.
His Mast– Obi-Wan standing above him.
“It's over, Anakin. I have the high ground.”
“You underestimate my power.”
“Don't try it.”
He remembers jumping, seeing his former Master's blade, realising in that split second that he'd made a mistake. The blade cuts through his legs, a familiar pain. He remembers losing his arm. He was beside Obi-Wan when he lost it. He was defending Obi-Wan when he lost it.
What irony, that he would lose everything else to his former Master, the one who was always meant to be by his side. Obi-Wan's eyes widen, as though hearing his thoughts, and before the saber can slash through his left arm, he feels a push in the Force. It throws him to the side and he slams into one of the nearby structures.
Through the pain lancing through his skull and the sticky wetness trickling into one eye, he sees his former Master raise his blade over him. His memories had blurred after that. In the two months since, he could never make anything out.
After Mustafar, he'd awoken in a medical centre. Darth Sidious had told him that he had been found near death, and near enough to the rising lava that he'd have been on fire if he hadn't been rescued in time. That he had been in a coma for several days from a concussion and broken ribs. That his legs had been replaced with prosthetics. He now bears a burn scar on his neck that had clearly been left by a lightsaber.
Had his Ma– Obi-Wan not gotten a chance to finish him off before Sidious arrived?
Then he'd been caught in his grief over Padme and forgot about how strange that was. Never questioned his belief that Sidious had saved him from his former Master, simply felt hate and betrayal burn through him. But now, now... he sees—no, remembers—remembers what his concussion had buried.
He sees through hazy eyes, his Master's hand trembling, bringing his lightsaber down with a shout and stopping just an inch from his neck. He raises the blade again and takes a deep breath, steadies his grip and swings once more, only to halt midway. There's tears running down his face now, and Obi-Wan cries out in frustration, brings the blade up and swings again.
Once more it stops an inch away. He feels the heat bite into his flesh, sear the skin of his neck. Sees his Master pull his blade back up to hit himself in the head with its hilt, before bringing his saber down again, his eyes frenzied and teeth clenched like a beast.
It stops.
Again and again.
His Master keeps trying to cut through his neck, failing every single time, as though there is a ray shield over his throat. He understands now why there is a deep burn across his flesh, but nothing more.
He watches, helpless, unable to move as his Master's face becomes more of a mess, blood runs down his neat beard as he tears into his lip with his teeth. Obi-Wan cries out in agony when his saber halts again at Anakin's throat, but goes no further. The air hums with his swings and mournful cries.
When his Master finally gives up, Anakin feels relief. Not for himself, but for Obi-Wan. His Master kneels beside him, eyes blank and empty with defeat.
“I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I've... I failed you.” His voice is hoarse from screaming and Anakin's heart hurts. “I can't... I can't even release you...”
His Master cradles his face gently, wipes the blood from his cheek with painful tenderness. Then he looks at the rising lava near them, the dismembered limbs that lay closer to the liquid fire as they ignite, the way Anakin's clothes are starting to blacken from the heat.
“It... it will be over soon...” Obi-Wan mutters and places a hand over his eyes, darkness envelops him. “Sleep. Sleep and feel no pain. I'm sorry...”
“Anakin.”
He gasps, eyes flying open again. Obi-Wan...
He drags his gaze up, and the disappointment he feels when he sees a stone pedestal is deeper than any he's ever felt before. He looks at the green Kyber Crystal hovering over the stone. It sings and pulses with light. Calm and beautiful. Quiet in its call. Haunting.
He stands shakily, pushes himself to his mechanical feet, strides over to the unbled crystal.
And closes the saber hilt around it.
The Crystal hadn't lied.
He'd managed to kill Darth Sidious. It had been easier than he thought it would be. His Ma– Palpatine, Sidious, had always felt bigger than life to him. Chancellor of the Senate, power even above the Jedi, the one who saved Naboo, protected Padme's home. The dark lord that had puppeteered both sides of the war, the man who'd been there for him for so many years, a confident and mentor he'd trusted.
The man who promised him everything he loved, yet delivered nothing but power.
He's gone now. That God-like man is gone.
Or... at least the Sith's body.
He groans with pain, has to stop to hack gastric juices into the desert sand. It hurts, in his head. Screams of rage ringing endlessly within his skull, shaking his teeth and making his eyes ache.
When he confronted Sidious, the dark lord had tried to take his body when he cut the man down. Tried to force himself inside him. He can still feel the man's mind swirling and writhing in his insides. The Crystal hadn't warned him of this. It's nauseating, like having a snake inside him. Strangling him, snapping at the edges of his mind. The cage he'd locked the dark lord in.
He needs Obi-Wan. His Master would know what to do. It hurts. He can barely hold his mind together, barely see.
Master! He calls out into the Force, follows his instincts, his senses. He's always been able to find his Master when he needs him. There's something relieved in his chest when he finds that this is still true. Searching for Obi-Wan to kill him had never worked. Not when he wanted to kill him.
Now, longing for him, aching for him, needing his Master in his soul. He finds the thinnest red thread still clinging to them and follows it.
His ship had crashed into the desert of Tatooine.
Kriffing Tatooine.
It's always Tatooine. Of course his Master would choose to hide here. The one place he would sooner see swallowed by a black hole than return to. He hates this place. The desert only takes.
‘If he were willing to welcome you, he wouldn't have chosen a place you would never go to.’
He shakes his head. No, it's... it's because this is safe. Outer... outer rim. Neutral territory. Free of clone troopers. The Empire.
He groans in pain and stumbles, falling into the sand. It's so hard to think. He drags himself up, feet sinking into the grit. Master, he needs to find his Master. He struggles to breathe through the cloth covering his face. There's grains in his nose, caught in the hairs, in his mouth, gumming his saliva into mud. It's probably in his lungs too and definitely in his servos. He hates sand.
Then he hears the sound of an animal, he raises his head, his vision blurry. Lifting his leaden legs is one of the hardest things he's ever done, and he thinks his lungs will soon give out.
He can feel him close by. His Master. It's been months since he's felt Obi-Wan's presence. It feels warm. Safe. Right. He hears footsteps and then the familiar sound of a saber being lit. He drags his hazy eyes up to the figure before him.
It's the same. Completely the same as the vision he'd been given. Relief weakens his knees, though he'd always planned to kneel.
‘Fool! He'll kill us!’
Sidious screams in anger and fear in his mind. It's deafening, loud and terrible.
“Obi-Wan...” He wheezes. “Please...”
He's not sure if he's begging for forgiveness, or mercy, or even death. Anything. He will take whatever Obi-Wan is willing to give.
Then the saber dims and lowers.
“Anakin.”
Anakin feels, for the first time in years.
Peace.
The desert doesn't care who you used to be. Obi-Wan had learnt that quickly. Under its twin suns, all were equal. All had to fight to survive. Not live. Survive. Purpose? Meaning? There was none out here. Only the desperation to protect oneself or—if you're unlucky enough to have them—loved ones.
It's a lesson he'd never really had to learn. He was always meant to be something more, like his brethren, blessed by the Force. He was born a Jedi, taken into the Order before he even got to know his parents. Who he was, who he is, who he will be. He's always had meaning and purpose. He has doubted himself, his capabilities, but never his path. That has always been clear.
It's still clear.
Sort of.
His path is at his feet. Luke. He has a new child to watch over. The child of his.
But for the first time, he walks his path looking back.
He's never done this before. Not really. He'd felt sadness and pain. He'd felt longing and grief. He's glanced back. Stolen mournful glimpses and then taken a deep breath, and looked forward again. Set his eyes on the path and held them there through pure force of will.
Now, he walks with his eyes fixed behind him. He can't look away. He searches for the path with his toes, backs along it slowly. He might as well be a blind man, for he cannot see the path. His eyes are enraptured, fixed to him. Like he will vanish if Obi-Wan blinks. Like even his memory will be taken from him.
Those playful blue eyes, gradually replaced by bright yellow orbs that burned like the lava around them that day as he swung his blade down on his child.
“You brought him here to kill me.”
Not convince, kill. His boy had jumped to that. It hurt. It hurt like nothing before. That Anakin could think so little of his love after betraying him, bending the knee to another man. Calling him —their enemy, the one who ultimately took Master Qui-Gon from them—calling that evil man Master.
It hurt because Anakin was correct.
Obi-Wan had been tasked to kill him.
Obi-Wan had been angry and hurt. He’d let that bleed into his words, unable to hide or suppress his grief. Even though he'd wanted nothing more than to be Anakin's guide again. Yet how could he guide Anakin, in so pivotal a moment, when he himself could barely see through his tears?
The blind leading the blind.
He never knew what he was doing with Anakin. Raising him, training him. There were no instructions for a Padawan this young, this old. Nine. A Padawan that had never been an initiate. Had grown up in the outer rims. As a slave no less. He'd been afraid of Anakin, afraid for Anakin, and helplessly in awe of him. His boy learnt so fast, fought so hard.
Most students needed encouragement to try hard. His boy needed encouragement to try less hard. To be more gentle, softer. Obi-Wan hadn't been taught how to tame a wild beast. He had learnt how to love from Master Qui-Gon, but his Master never taught him how to stop loving. To slow his love and tamper it. There must have been a way.
He never found it.
He'd felt loss before. So many times. But these last few months have felt like nothing that had come before. The result of a love he couldn't restrain. It wasn't like losing something cherished, it wasn't like losing Satine, it wasn't like losing Master Qui-Gon, it wasn't even like losing a lightsaber. It was like losing his connection to the Force and all his limbs at the same time.
Made worse by actually having to cut off his connection to the Force, lest he make a ripple in it and draw the attention of the Sith. He would bury his lightsaber soon, alongside An... he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
For now, he needs it, as protection against Sand People. They still hadn't quite recognised his territory yet, small as it was, a simple cave cut into the underside of the mountain. He couldn't let anyone who attacked him and forced him to use his lightsaber live to tell the tale. So, establishing his claim on this space was slow and would require many lives to stake.
These... these were the rules and fears that Anakin had grown up with. The law of Power. Paid in blood.
He understands a bit better now. The humiliation and disgrace of being powerless. He's only been here for two months and it's already wearing at him. He's nobody now. This isn't an undercover mission where he pretends to be nobody. It's real. He no longer has a home to go back to. People he can trust. Laws to believe in.
He must stand by, and watch injustice occur. It bites. It was bearable when he was a Jedi, at least they were preventing what injustice they could. He could trust in the system, in procedures carved out by those wiser than he. It's another thing to be preventing nothing at all.
To have power and lose it. It’s really something he never thought he'd come to understand this well.
How must it have felt for his boy? To come from this and then suddenly taste power, more power than even the greatest warriors in the galaxy. It probably felt like nothing was impossible. A terrifying prospect, he now sees. It means that anything that goes wrong, must be your own fault then. Didn't it? Every injustice you see, you must fix.
His poor Anakin...
Master...
He flinches when he feels something familiar, a tender caress. Obi-Wan smothers his Force signature more carefully, though he knows that isn't possible. His boy was dead. And even if he wasn't, he wouldn't call out to Obi-Wan like that ever again.
He shoves his thoughts aside and checks the vaporator humming outside his cave in the light of the evening suns. Collects the two or three cans it had gathered and goes inside to store them away carefully. Water is precious here, on Tatooine.
He misses being able to shower. Even a sonic would be a blessing right about now. He now understands why Anakin had been so crazy about water for their first five years together. His boy had loved baths as a nine-year-old child. He would rub his squeaky-clean fingers against Obi-Wan's back in delight, squealed with happiness when Obi-Wan washed his hair in crystal clear water.
Those fond memories are just pain now. He thinks about Anakin, murmuring sleepily into his collar as the boy cuddled up to him in the night, saying he would love to die drowning. He hadn't understood then, as a twenty-five year old. Death was such a close companion to all here, young and old, that there was nothing morbid or horrifying about a child musing on their death.
Nothing strange or scary at all, for little Anakin to say something like that to the person he trusted most.
Obi-Wan sits by his workshop pile and starts fixing his backup vaporator, an old model he'd managed to trade for from a Jawa clan. It should be serviceable, the sensor array was just so badly misaligned that it was unable to detect when to operate to collect water, so it simply never moved.
Like him, fully operational, but rendered useless by blind ignorance.
He thinks about granting the boy his wish. Considering everything that had happened to Anakin and because of him. Perhaps it would have been a kindness, if he had just pushed the boy under the water of their baths with gentle hands. Let him burble, happy and playful, until the water flooded his narrow throat and filled his soft little lungs.
Drowning in the gentle cool water he loved, instead of boiling lava.
A low farting sound comes from the cave entrance, most likely from Akkani, his eopie. Obi-Wan stands and leaves his cave to go to his faithful mount.
“What is it, Akkani?” He asks, brushing the soft fur on its side and it gives him another farty sound from its snout. “Oh, is that what you think? Well, I wouldn't say you smell like a bed of roses either.”
Obi-Wan smiles, recalling the day he'd purchased it. The eopie had gotten excited and almost threw him off. Perhaps his brain had misfired and pulled the wrong file, but it had reminded him of Anakin's terrifying flying. So, by pure force of habit, he'd yelped, “ack Ani–”
He'd cut himself off halfway through his boy's name, but ever since then, the mount refused to respond to anything besides that sound. So, its name was thus, Akkani. A sad smile curls his mouth, his boy would have been tickled for years if he heard this story, he can almost hear his teasing.
Tears come to his eyes, and he scoffs bitterly. After how spectacularly he'd failed to command his thoughts today. That he would be brought to tears by this, is pathetic. No wonder he hadn't been able to commune with Master Qui-Gon. He's a mess. Still a mess.
Then he hears movement a short distance away. The sound of heavy footsteps, sand grating against rock, and he stiffens. Obi-Wan rushes back inside to grab his lightsaber, and comes back out quickly, ready to defend Akkani if necessary. He watches warily, hiding his saber hilt behind his back.
A hooded figure emerges up the rise. Lumbering slowly over the sand, it stumbles and totters towards him. Even though he has closed himself off to the Force, at this distance, Obi-Wan can feel the faintest yet undeniable whisp of the Dark Side. Panic seizes him and he raises his saber, lighting it immediately. How did they find him!?
Then he hears a voice he never thought would grace his ears again.
“Obi-Wan...” It sounds like him. The man raises his face and the hood drops away. There are tears spilling down his cheeks as he falls to his knees. “Please...”
Obi-Wan cannot believe it. He's afraid to believe it, but a trembling hand reaches out to him. He knows that face, worn and tired. He's alive. He's here. Calling for him, begging for him. Obi-Wan can't believe it, but his body can. Has rehearsed this in his sleep, night after night, for the last two months since Mustafar. The saber dims without his notice, and he steps forward.
“Anakin...” It's a plea, a question, and a prayer all in one.
The moment he's within reach, the boy latches onto his pant leg. Obi-Wan feels fear in his heart, fear that this is a trick, a trap. But the sob in Anakin's throat has Obi-Wan crouching and placing a gentle hand on his cheek.
“Master...” Anakin gasps, raising a hand to cling to his shirt. Obi-Wan brushes the tears from his boy's eyes, lifts his chin to better see him in the evening light.
His eyes are yellow.
Obi-Wan recoils.
Stumbles upright and reaches for his saber again.
“Help me... Master...” The boy begs, dropped back to the floor by his withdrawal. He looks pathetic, curled up on the floor like a worm. Pain and revulsion flare in Obi-Wan's heart again. How many times must this boy break it?
“It hurts... Master...” Such a pitiful whine. Calling him Master, when those eyes mark him as another's. Anger spikes within him. “Master... don't leave me...”
Obi-Wan swallows, steels himself to run, to take Luke and flee. The clone troopers would surely not be far behind, but it sounds too much like Anakin. Like he did as a child, sick with a cold, begging for comfort, for relief.
“Where's your new Master?” He can't help but ask, some part of Obi-Wan is praying that he is wrong. Praying he's right. Because he doesn't know which is scarier, that this is real or that it is a trick.
The boy shakes his head sluggishly, like he's drunk. That masochistic piece of himself remembers the first time he found his foolish boy drunk after they had a fight. He was fifteen, still a child. Still a child, his child, Obi-Wan had had to remind himself, over and over, when the boy grabbed him by the robes and pressed their lips together.
It was sloppy and terrible, as only a drunk child who had never kissed anything in his life could, but it had made every alarm in his body go off. Every warning siren wailed loudly and painfully as he struggled to put out the fire that it had ignited. He'd pulled the boy off him, forced the child's hands from his body and wrapped him in his robe. To halt his reaching hands.
And his own that itched to follow.
“I... I killed him...” He freezes as the boy reaches his hand out again. “For... for you... Master...”
He stares at that trembling hand, limp and tired. Anakin killed Sidious? Is this real?
A muffled moan slips out from Anakin's lips and the hand begins to fall. Obi-Wan catches it without thinking. The moment their skin touches, tears spring to his eyes. His boy's hand is warm, fingers rough and calloused from hours spent training with Obi-Wan and fighting beside him. He kneels, cupping the boy's jaw and helping him back onto his knees.
“What hurts?” Obi-Wan asks softly, flinching when Anakin's yellow eyes meet his own.
Nausea roils in his stomach at the sight, love and hate warring in him. Those eyes. Those disgusting yellow things. A symbol of everything he's lost. All his failures and regrets. They don't belong on his boy's beautiful face.
“He– Sidious... he's inside me...” Anakin whimpers in pain. “My head...”
The statement is so bewildering that, for a moment, Obi-Wan wonders if this is some horrifyingly broken way of saying he had been raped and tortured. Nausea hits him again. Had he– he had left Anakin there. Had he left Anakin to a fate worse than death? Was that how the evil creature broke his boy?
How long? Before? During the war? While he was a child? All those times Palpatine had taken Anakin from him, abused his authority over the Jedi to secret Anakin—his Padawan—away from Obi-Wan. The idea makes him want to vomit.
“In my mind... I– I managed to fight... his control...” Anakin chokes out, like the words pain him. “But I can't– can't get him... out...”
“Shh, let me see. Look at me.” Obi-Wan murmurs, takes Anakin by the sides of his face, cups his soft cheeks and presses their foreheads together. He forces himself to meet those ugly yellow orbs and opens himself to the Force for the first time in what feels like forever.
The first thing he feels is Anakin's signature, that majestic presence that always felt like the warmth of the sun and equally as blinding. The connection between them that feels like home. Like comfort and fire, like quiet rest and boundless passion. It's almost nostalgic now, and it brings tears to his eyes, to feel his gaping loneliness finally appeased.
Obi-Wan hears Anakin take a shuddering breath and feels the heat of it fan across his lips. It's difficult to remind himself that he's not here to bask in Anakin's presence, that he's looking for the source of his pain.
For better or for worse, he doesn't have to look very hard.
‘KENOBI!’
He flinches at the familiar voice of the Chancellor. Rage and darkness leak from the boy's mind, enshrouding Anakin's radiant and melodic signature, and his boy wails in pain. It's terrifying in its intensity.
Okay, so he had meant that quite literally.
Obi-Wan grips Anakin tighter, sweat beading on his brow as he tries to help his boy wrangle the foul creature from his mind. He wrenches and pulls at it with all his might, only to hear a scream from Anakin and feel his boy's presence in the Force flicker. Alarm shoots through him, watching in horror as that parasitical thing constricts around his boy.
Anakin is too drained, his signature too weak for Obi-Wan to remove Sidious without killing him.
The evil thing living inside his boy laughs maniacally, ‘will you do it? Kill your Padawan? Like you so desperately tried to before?’
Obi-Wan snarls in anger, this man had taken everything from him, and now, when his boy is ready to repent, Sidious is once again in-between them. He glares into those glazed over yellow eyes, he hates them so much. Hates that they are on Anakin's face, sitting there like they're natural. Like they were meant to be there.
Like the blue he'd loved had always been an illusion.
Obi-Wan's anger is dark and overpowering, the kind that wants to hurt, rip, and tear. Then, he feels a barely noticeable tug on that Dark anger, cold creeping along it. Flinches when he feels Sidious attempt to latch onto it and travel into him.
He withdraws in alarm. Feels Anakin's presence in the Force buckle under the weight that had been dropped back onto his shoulders. Obi-Wan stares in horror at his boy. This new threat is even more dangerous. That the Sith might use his own anger to take over Obi-Wan's body instead.
Is killing Anakin the only way? Pain lances through him.
He can't.
Not again.
Anakin is here, on his knees for him. Anakin came to him. Killed Sidious for him. He can't kill Anakin now. Not like this.
But he can feel Anakin losing the battle of wills against the Sith Lord by the second.
If he lets Anakin live... that thing could take over, become the most powerful Sith in all history. There would be no hope. It's too early, Luke and Leia are too young. If this creature took Anakin's body or Obi-Wan's, the child would not be able to fight them off. Obi-Wan tries again to look at those yellow eyes, but the Dark anger within him comes rushing back and he averts his gaze.
It's too soon for him too. The wound is too raw.
Then an idea comes to him. A compromise. A small price to pay, surely. After everything Anakin had done. For his life. To buy them time. A safety net for the galaxy as well. In case he fails again. Obi-Wan is no longer so arrogant as to think he can hold back the end of the universe with half measures. For Anakin's own good, for the good of the galaxy.
For his own sanity.
“Anakin.” Obi-Wan breathes, cradles Anakin's chin in his hand.
The boy moans, his eyes squeezed closed in pain and Obi-Wan feels dizzy. A strange, unsettling heat throbs through his veins at the sound. He takes a deep breath and steels himself for what he must do. Then takes a moment to slip two fingers into his own mouth, cleaning the sand from them. This is the best they will get on such short notice.
There isn't time.
“You did well, coming to me.” Obi-Wan then murmurs, traces his thumb over the boy's chin, cups his face like he's always wanted to, like a lover. “Anakin...”
Those long lashes flutter open and, even through the yellow, the way Anakin looks at him, leans into his palm, is beautiful. Trusting, loving, serene despite the agony he must be in. Obi-Wan savours this moment, as poisoned as it is by yellow. Wishes and longs for the blue he will never see again. The windows to the soul.
He tells himself that he's just doing what is necessary, but his fingers twitch and itch for it.
“Master will...” Obi-Wan swallows, bringing his hand up with a reassuring smile. He holds two fingers out as though to brush the scar that goes across Anakin's eye. While he tightens his grip on the boy's jaw with the other, which finally seems to alert Anakin to the fact that something is off. “...protect you.”
With that promise, he stabs his fingers into the boy's eye.
Anakin shrieks.
His hands leave the floor to scrabble madly at Obi-Wan's wrist and forearm. His nails tear into Obi-Wan's skin, drawing blood, but he holds Anakin's entire upper body weight by his jaw, refusing to relinquish his grip.
Obi-Wan digs his fingers past that disgusting glowing yellow orb. Watches white fluids and viscera ooze out from the entry point as they sink into his skull's cavity. The boy's hot flesh swallows his digits, soft and squishy. Flesh and veins lodge themselves under his fingernails.
It's horrible. Crippling his child even further like this, so brutally, without even painkillers or the merciful swiftness of a saber. But his breath is heavier than it should be, as he viciously curls his fingers. Anakin's body jolts like he's been electrocuted. He'd stopped screeching a while ago. The boy simply trembles uncontrollably, his jaw hanging open in a silent scream, choked noises gurgling in his throat.
There's something about this moment. With the boy's neck in his grip, his fingers inside his skull, just inches from Anakin's brain. He's never done anything this grotesque before, with his own bare hands. It feels almost... intimate.
Obi-Wan swallows thickly and struggles to focus. Carefully coils his fingers around the slippery sphere resting in the mess of sticky goo, uses the Force to find the right angle to catch it securely. He doesn't want to have to stick his fingers inside again and put his boy through this pain more than necessary. He makes sure that it is firmly in his grip.
And pulls.
There's a wet pop as the squishy orb is ripped from Anakin's skull and his body goes limp. Passed out from the pain no doubt. Good. Better that, than to feel all the anguish he must be in... especially when Obi-Wan repeats the process with Anakin's other eye. He can't afford to not finish the job this time. Not when that would risk having to kill Anakin.
Again.
His brow is damp with sweat by the time he's done, it trickles down his neck and makes him shiver in the rapidly cooling desert night air.
Obi-Wan cradles the two slimy spheres in one hand, while the other manoeuvres the boy over his shoulder with the aid of the Force. Then he carries Anakin into the small cave he'd made his home for the last two months. He's ashamed to admit that a part of him is enjoying being free to reconnect with the Force once more.
No doubt the Empire is in havoc after the death of the Emperor, and the disappearance of his second in command. It will be some time before anyone has the time or inclination to search the outer rim for Force signatures.
He lowers Anakin onto his sad excuse of a bed, props him partially upright to reduce blood flow to the open wounds. His limbs are still twitching and spasming. Obi-Wan had felt strangely calm during the whole process, but now, watching his boy's unconscious body continue to react to what he has put it through. Seeing the tears of blood running down Anakin's face makes the guilt, horror, and nausea that he seemed to have misplaced come flooding back.
A sob forces its way out of his throat, choking him with it, the hand holding his boy's eyes trembles. His breathing is no longer heavy. It's short and panicked, clear tears run down his own face. What has he done? His boy, Anakin. He'd had to. Sidious was winning. He had to do something. He knows. But this was his child. The boy he was supposed to protect and care for.
A mournful sob shakes his shoulders, and when his grip tightens, he remembers the springy slimy orbs in it. Obi-Wan's own eyes gravitate slowly to the two in his hand and with stiff movements, he opens his trembling fist to see them.
His heart stops.
They're... blue.
Under the blood that is sliding off the glossy glass-like surface. Under smooth clear jelly, two perfect, beautiful blue irises. A shuddering breath leaves his lips. He raises them up, in the light of the lamp, and stares at them, glistening in the palm of his hand. He wets his lips and swallows thickly.
Beautiful crystal clear blue.
A hysterical laugh wheezes through Obi-Wan's throat, he cradles them to his chest tenderly, adoringly. Gazes into those precious gems, and breathes. “Anakin.”
