It was all a mistake.
I mean, I truly did intend to do what I had just done. I just had not realized the consequences. It turned out to be a horrible mistake, and I had taken far more than I realized from Obi-Wan.
I took his hope.
I had done what I saw I needed to do, for I couldn't stand to see my padawan, soon to be knighted apprentice, facing such a future. I loved him, my Obi-Wan, and had foreseen a great future for him, a bright light among the Jedi.
Tomorrow, he would stand by my side as a Knight.
Unspoken between us yet was which of us would apprentice young Anakin Skywalker, whom I believed to be the Chosen One. Obi-Wan was being knighted for defeating the Sith who had come close to relieving me of my life on Naboo. Force knows I wanted the boy, but I was getting older as the battle had served to remind me.
Obi-Wan was the future, as was Anakin. I thought to place the future in their hands, together. I had never been as happy as I was that night, even more pleased than Obi-Wan himself.
I should never have asked Obi-Wan about the visions he had faced in Ilum so many years ago, when he had constructed his first lightsaber. He had obviously passed through them, but he had been scarred by them, for when the thirteen year old boy had returned to me, he moved as if in a dream.
He had shivered as we left the planet behind, and disappeared. Once I had the course set, I had gone to find him. He was shivering in a corner and his eyes were blank with misery and pain.
Those jeweled eyes that shone with the light of the Force were now dark and haunted by something, deep within their depths.
"I'm going to be so alone…why will be I so alone? I don't want to fail the Force," he had said, lips quivering, and had thrown himself into my arms. He would not speak further of his vision.
I had watched him for a long while after our return, for he didn't want to be alone even in our quarters. I could sense an ache of loneliness that was far deeper than I could possibly imagine, and such grief that my own heart was about to break. Out of desperation, I had told my padawan that he would never be alone, for the Force would always be with him.
He had looked at me for the longest time, then he nodded and a slight smile broke over his face. He had needed that reminder and it had brought my Obi-Wan back to me.
We had never spoken of that again, and he had seemed to put it behind him, had learned how to smile again.
Now, this evening before his knighting, he was deep in meditation and I sensed him struggling to accept something. I went to stand by him, and placed my hand on his shoulder, and I was drawn into a vision of his future with him.
My Obi-Wan was much older, and yet I knew he wasn't as old as he appeared to be. My padawan, who deserved such a bright future, had been stripped of love, companions and friendship, a gentle soul forever alone and haunted by inconsolable sadness.
An Obi-Wan who thought he had failed, but still struggled on through each day.
Yes, I saw then what the future held for my Obi-Wan, the long lonely years, alone with bitter memories and haunted by the fear that he had failed the Force. Endless days and endless nights, a grief stricken man forever alone.
My padawan deserved so much better.
I saw him, face upraised and awaiting the stroke from his beloved brother that would take his life, waiting for death without a murmur of protest. Patient, weary and waiting. Watching with a hint of a smile, waiting for the blow that would take his life – when he would give himself to the Force.
No!
Tears sprang to my eyes. I couldn't let this happen, not to Obi-Wan. No one deserved to wait for and to welcome physical death to claim them from a living death.
I would do anything to spare Obi-Wan such a fate. I would not hesitate to die myself, this moment, to save him from such a bleak future. I turned tear stained eyes to his and let out a great sob of protest.
"Master?" He sought to comfort me, pulled out of his meditation with a gentle murmur of my name and looked at me with soft and smiling eyes. Loving eyes.
"I love you, Obi-Wan," I said tenderly as I wrapped my arms around him, and ignited my lightsaber. It stabbed through his back, his chest and pierced my own chest. His eyes went wide with shock, with the knowledge that he was already dead and at my hands.
"Why?" he whispered, hands clutching at my arms. He was gasping with pain, his breath shuddering through his throat and the knowledge of his death shining in his eyes, those luminous eyes, darkening with approaching death. "I love you, Master."
"As I love you, my padawan," I choked. "Because – I love you."
Even as he slumped in my arms, my hands caught him and pressed him to my heart. I opened the bond to share the pain that wracked his body, that of my poor padawan, dying in desperate pain from the wound I had given him.
I didn't want him to suffer, but my blow was not true.
"I'm sorry, I didn't want you to feel it…I love you, my Obi-Wan," I whispered. "I wanted it to be quick and painless, and to see you in so much pain is killing me."
I could see now that this pain would soon leave him; he would not suffer long, not those long years of suffering I saw ahead of him.
Merciful Force, take him soon. Now. Don't let him suffer.
With his dying breath, Obi-Wan looked into my eyes one last time, and spoke words that twisted my heart. Now I knew it was I who failed; I who had failed the Force, and I who would have to live with that knowledge.
"You have killed hope," he whispered, and then I saw what he had known deep inside, why he didn't protest his fate.
His years of suffering and pain were a price he had been willing to pay, for it would have brought his killer's son to save his killer, and thus the galaxy – the man who would be as a brother to him and who would turn on him.
Obi-Wan saw that hope, that redemption, die with him. He would now die thinking that he had failed the Force. The guardian to the Chosen One and to his son would not guide them to their destinies – his destiny. Because of me.
The Chosen One would eventually have brought balance, because his son was loved and guided by a lonely, fiercely determined man who accepted his fate, because it would bring light back to the galaxy. Obi-Wan's heart would have been the flame to ignite the light once more.
I had now destroyed it. The light would be extinguished, and there would be no one to rekindle it. I had killed he who would have been the means of bringing it back.
"The light…who shall bring back the light?" Obi-Wan whispered as his hand wavered and reached painfully towards me, only to fall short as his head fell limp against my chest. Obi-Wan was now free of his pain, his life having slipped into the Force. He was dead, my beloved padawan, at my hands.
And I, who loved him, who had killed him, fell to my knees, a broken man holding his dead body. The stab that had taken Obi-Wan's life had only wounded me. I was only dead in heart and mind.
"Forgive me?" I murmured, kissing his face and hugging his lifeless body to me, feeling the chill of death steal over that loving soul now set free. "I love you."
I rocked on the ground, with my beloved Obi-Wan dead in my arms. The light in the galaxy would be extinguished some years hence. The light in my personal galaxy had already gone out.
Darkness reigned.
And all because - I loved him.