Chapter Text
Obi-Wan Kenobi looked down at the cavern swarming with battle droids and was struck by the sudden realization that today could be the day he died.
Somehow, he always imagined that when he died, Anakin would be there with him. The feeling was no more than a quiet assumption that persisted in the deep recesses of his mind for over sixteen years, a belief taken for a fact.
His mind fell to their parting words in the hangar and the restraint he’d shown. Obi-Wan regretted not embracing his friend as they said goodbye. He also regretted dissuading him from joining the mission. The certainty of death would be easier managed if Anakin were by his side. Where he belonged.
Allowing himself a moment of melancholy before returning to the task at hand, Obi-Wan jumped off the platform. As he descended, he emptied himself of everything that was “Obi-Wan Kenobi”. In its place, he let the Force rush in, surrendering himself to the currents and connection, to everything and everyone that was possible through its power.
He was no longer “Obi-Wan”, he was simply a vessel for the Force and its will.
***
What have I done?
Anakin stumbled out into the colonnade underneath the senate building, his long shadow crawling across the tiles unsteadily. Every step was a battle as vertigo tilted his world on its axis and tunnel vision closed in on him, casting a darkened vignette that obscured the light from the corners of his eyes. He struggled to capture oxygen out of the air, each breath catching in his chest as if he were slowly suffocating on ash. Nausea struck him and his footing gave way, and Anakin’s shoulder slammed into a cold stone column. He heaved violently and clung to the pillar as the world started spinning and spinning and spinning.
Where was he?
Everything was a blur behind a throbbing headache that wouldn’t relent. The chilled column offered something solid to focus on, an anchor where he could concentrate and slowly, purposefully suck deep gulps of air back into his lungs. Anakin wanted to kick himself back into action and let momentum take over, but he felt like he was on the deck of an LAAT in a terminal free fall. Everything had happened so fast, every memory of this evening was flashing by in a spinning spiral.
What happened?
Anakin tried to steady his breathing but his mind betrayed him. Against his will, he was dragged hundreds of floors up into the Coruscanti skyline and the Chancellor’s suite. He refused to acknowledge what happened; this whole day precipitated from one event to the next without a break. The only certainty he had that these events truly happened was the cold, nagging darkness in the pit of darkness that hollowed his stomach, and the holo playing in his head nonstop.
Over and over and over, events played out as if they’d happened to someone else. In this detached, ghostly out of body state, he saw himself: Anakin Skywalker, staring straight ahead with an unfocused gaze as the blurry image of the Chancellor’s melted, durasteel face came into view. The grizzly man’s words were muffled by the piercing sounds of the wind whipping into the suite from the void where a window once stood.
Who was that man?
Anakin didn’t remember kneeling, but there he was, on his knees.
He didn’t remember the words he screamed at Mace Windu, nor what prompted him to recreate the strike that took Dooku’s hands on the Korun Master, the man—though begrudgingly—had saved him from a life of servitude and slavery all those years ago.
But he did remember the smell. Ozone, acrid like a lightning strike and burnt flesh.
Anakin remembered Mace’s surprised visage as the lightning carried him away far into the storm, into the night, and then down into the depths of Coruscant’s lower levels. The sick realization that he was a participant in Mace’s demise sent chills down his spine. He wanted to cry, to scream; mere hours ago, Anakin had begged that very man for even the smallest sliver of clarity and now, he is the reason Master Windu was dead.
A frigid numbness grasped Anakin’s heart; the frostiness of a dying supernova, the coldness of a regret so deep he needed to bury it outside of himself. The sadness was heavy, oppressive, and if Anakin gave it a second thought, it would paralyze him completely.
What have I done?
In his mindspace, a loud whistling filled his ears, and throbbing pounded at Anakin’s temples. His senses were overloaded by shame and guilt as the scattered memories of only a few hours prior fell into place; the inescapable cold, the smell of burning flesh, the flashing lightning that left blind spots in his vision, the bile burning the back of his throat.… Overwhelmed, Anakin’s chest spasmed. He was unsure whether it was a sob or the sudden realization that he had held his breath for too long and was now desperately gasping for air.
The Anakin in his memory clamped his eyes shut. He couldn’t think. His mind was overstimulated with the constant assault to his senses. And then there was the Chancellor’s droning, talking at him.
He needed him to stop.
He needed everything to stop.
If only he could have one second of silence to stop and think.
But the artillery attack on his mind by everything that had just transpired was too much.
The shadow version of him swayed in the dark, somewhere from beyond where his vision focused, desperately grasping onto the slithery voice of the one person who knew all his deepest darkest secrets: “You are fulfilling your destiny, Anakin. Become my apprentice. Learn to use the dark side of the Force.“
Anakin watched his own lips part and betray the Jedi he was.
“I will do whatever you ask,” his mouth said, when what he really wanted to say was, “I will do whatever you ask, but please just make it stop”.
The ghostly Anakin looked up from his knees. He wanted to drop his head, allow himself to collapse in a heap, let the pain and tunnel vision drag him into the bottom of the floor and into the depths of the dark dying star calling his name.
But instead, the voice that was attached to his shadow body whispered a pledge to the Sith.
The voice coming from where the Chancellor stood, now a dark cloaked figure of melting wax and malice, cackled, “Good. Very good. A powerful Sith you will become. Henceforth, you shall be known as Darth... Vader.”
The memory of Jedi Anakin Skywalker screamed in his head, collapsing and crying from within himself as his heart shattered into a million pieces.
The pain that struck him now as he stood in the darkened colonnade compounded with old wounds he’d left to fester. Regret ached in Anakin’s chest as the suffering he caused throughout his life swallowed him whole. All at once he felt it: his mother’s death, the loud braying of the sand people, Qui-Gon Jinn’s voice begging him to stop, Dooku’s head separated from his corpse frozen for eternity, Mace’s screams as lightning carried him into the dark. Anakin felt as his heart withered and died in his chest, crushing him with a dull aching pain, an inescapable event horizon that dragged him unwillingly to a crushing despair.
His mind was spiraling.
All he felt was the pain. The death. The suffering.
Anakin’s lungs heaved. Each breath an agonizing stab. He felt disgustingly nauseous. He was careening into a darkness that had no end.
A large raindrop hit his face. It smelled of charred plastoid and durasteel. The remnants of the battle he’d won only forty-eight hours before now nothing more than particulate in the fiery atmosphere raining down on all of Coruscant, unbeknownst raining down the ash and remains of his first betrayal against the Jedi Code: taking Dooku’s life unnecessarily.
What have I done?
Was it me?
Am I the type of monster that inflicts so much pain?
Questions Anakin vehemently wished he could deny. But there was no doubt about his guilt. He saw his shadow self in the holo he replayed in his mind. He was a monster, just like the Chancellor. Just like all of the Sith he was raised to condemn.
There was no turning back.
Anakin grasped at the remaining scraps of the person, of the Jedi, he was.
Anything left uncharred.
Anything left unmarked.
Anything left untouched by the darkness he willingly accepted.
The tainted rain began to fall harder, the fat drops mixing with the tears streaming down his cheeks.Anakin took a shuddering breath in the cold. Then through the haze of his despair, a voice broke through clear, warm, real.
“There is no other Jedi I would rather have at my side right now.” The memory of his Master’s sunlit smile glowed like a beacon, his voice calm and steady as they said goodbye.
It was the voice that quelled the nightmares of his childhood, the voice that gently held him when homesick tears streamed down his cheeks, the steadying force that saw him through years of bloody campaigns that spanned the galaxy. Anakin could almost feel the weight of his arm across his shoulders offering a reassuring squeeze.
Rising from the frozen dread in his core, a single ember of warmth flickered.
Obi-Wan.
What have I done?
A wave of panic struck him, freezing him on the spot.
Anakin focused on the smell of the rain, on each droplet hitting his face, He tried to push the fear deeper into his heart, suddenly realizing how “the Hero with no fear” had been a misnomer.
He was afraid.
Utterly terrified of what he had brought down upon him.
Of what would happen to Obi-Wan.
Afraid for the destiny he had doomed him to: a horrible death at the hands of the Republic he so faithfully defended. He’d doomed him to a future without his beloved brethren, a future where his best friend and the man he dedicated his life to training had betrayed him. Anakin practically condemned him to die, if not at his hands, but by his actions.
The fires over Coruscant burned bright. Ashes swirled in the breeze, the galaxy’s hope and soul laid broken at his feet.
Instead of grieving the loss of civilization as he knew it, for the hundreds of Jedi he betrayed, the star systems that would fall for pledging their allegiance to the Separatists, or the death of democracy at the hands of the Chancellor, Anakin’s ribs cracked open for one man: Obi-Wan.
How was he capable of such cruelty?
Anakin’s treacherous heart ached for his youth, in remembrance of Obi-Wan kissing his scraped knees, teaching him to swim,, and his comforting hug when the remnant dreams of his time as a slave would wake him up in the night. For his brief foray into Knighthood, when Obi-Wan sat silently at his side when the Force became too much, patched blaster wounds that had slipped between the plates of his armor, and had shared his rations when Anakin had none.
How did he allow this to happen?
No.
He wouldn’t.
He couldn’t give up Obi-Wan.
Not for the galaxy, no matter how hard the Chancellor pleaded with him. He would never deliver him to Palpatine or to his death. He had pledged his loyalty to the Chancellor, but Anakin’s heart remained his own.
He might not be able to save all the Jedi, but he could at least try to save one.
Oh how Anakin wished he could see Obi-Wan just one more time. Could hear his voice one last time. Warn him of what was yet to come and ask him to run, to escape and never look back. Before the galaxy fell apart. Before he broke the galaxy apart.
He knew Obi-Wan too well; his Master would never go quietly. He would fight relentlessly, and the Chancellor would respond in kind. Palpatine would hunt him to the ends of the Outer Rim. Anakin couldn’t let that happen.
He needed to know Obi-Wan was safe.
The fogginess in his brain and the ache in his heart made it impossible to string two thoughts together. He needed to come up with a plan. He gathered all the remaining strength he possessed and forced the pain to a corner of his mind. Anakin took a deep breath and dragged his fingers down his face.
In a single, sharp moment of focus, his mind shifted into the cold war room strategy mode he was so familiar with. He indexed every asset he had at his disposal to reach Obi-Wan covertly. Then, a memory surfaced through the throbbing headache: a hidden comm-link he had tucked into a maintenance panel on Obi-Wan’s starfighter after Cato Neimoidia. A contingency he’d never expected to use.
If he could reach the Temple hangar undetected, he could trigger the frequency. He didn't have much time.
Anakin’s next objective was clear.
The Temple.