Disclaimer: La la la, I don't own Obi-Wan or Star Wars. (Give it time.)
Exodus: Sand and Ash
By: OneSongKatie
Obi-Wan shaded his eyes from the overwhelming brightness generated by not one, but two burning suns. He grimaced, surveying his new home. Sand extended for what seemed a thousand miles in every direction.
A man could go mad when aligned with such an expansively bleak landscape. But he wouldn't.
Gritting his teeth, Obi-Wan withdrew his concentrated hold on the Force, allowing himself to feel for the first time the total intensity of the twin suns of Tatooine. Unmitigated by the Force homeostasis he had been carefully imposing, the heat radiating from this world was overwhelming. Oppressive, inescapable.
Much like destiny, he mused. But then, Obi-Wan no longer felt certain he understood the fate that lay before him. He desperately wanted to trust in oaths and credos he'd been taught since infancy. Surely there was still a greater intelligence in the Force. Surely this new, desolate platform was merely part of a much larger design.
Obi-Wan struggled to remain centered. Perhaps so, he realized, but whatever the structure of the Force truly indicated, they had been wrong about it. He and the other members of the Jedi Council. They had been so wrong.
From the very beginning.
About the Sith presence, about the War, about Anakin's role in all of it, about the nature of the Force itself. They had been used, their trust in the Force wielded against them.
But then, he once more countered, the deception they suffered must be part of a greater plan—Obi-Wan needed to believe in a rationale. The Force striving to achieve balance. But surely this could not be balance?
Obi-Wan did not re-institute his homeostasis. He needed to fully experience this place, needed to let its great, white energy flow through his weary body. He continued walking, thinking of his home, the only world he could ever begin to call home.
The artificial florescence of Coruscant, while bright, could not compare to the intensity of the twin suns. There was something primal about this light—something inexorably powerful. Raw power. Power unharvested, unfiltered. Energy enough to obliterate the entire system if the suns were so inclined, yes, but at its core, a power that extended beyond life or death. The light from the suns would still be burning long after his death. Long after the deaths of all he knew.
Obi-Wan allowed himself a brief flash of grief and guilt, thinking of Anakin. He considered the boy Anakin once was, gazing up at the two suns and seeing the same power Obi-Wan saw now. He saw the young slave that Anakin had been a long time ago, a lifetime ago, he saw Anakin watch the suns and desire their power. Power enough to free himself and his mother from slavery, power enough to become a Jedi—the Jedi. How could he have known that power would one day defeat him?
For those who possess the ability to unlock the future merely by closing their eyes, why is it that we can never see the catastrophic until it looms over us? Obi Wan wondered desolately. Until it is too late. Why is it hardest to see what we don't want to see? Even if the path is unavoidable, we never see what we cannot conceive of.
He flashed on Anakin as he'd last seen him, his flesh ruined, his mind yet further destroyed. You were the Chosen One! You were supposed to bring balance to the Force, not destroy it! Obi-Wan remembered his own words, miserably.
It was guilt that caused those words to break free from his bruised, scorched lips, resounding with anger and anguish.
Obi-Wan stopped walking abruptly, brushed his hair back from his face and searched his feelings. He still felt it. The nagging guilt had settled low in his belly and tightened painfully with every step he took.
He still couldn't let go of his guilt, couldn't dissolve the notion that Anakin's fall was his fault. He was the boy's teacher, he'd had the chance to show him the path toward the Light side. And he'd failed him.
Obi-Wan was not the Chosen One, he was not a shatter-point upon which the fate of the universe would be decided. He had always been just a Jedi. And he'd had the chance to make a difference. Make Anakin choose right, and not easy. Help him to understand the necessity of no attachments.
But regret was no use to him. He could not change Anakin's choices, nor his own.
As he'd turned his back forever on Anakin's demolished body on that wretched fire planet, Obi-Wan had not been able to not block out the shattered man's final words to him.
I hate you, he'd screamed, his voice no longer human, barely comprehensible.
Obi-Wan had known then, in his broken heart, that Anakin was dead. You were my brother. And I loved you. The words echoed through Obi-Wan's brain. You were my brother. And now he was gone. His Padawan, his friend, his brother, his promise to Qui-Gon. Ash.
Ash surrounded him, like sand billowing endlessly through this sea of dunes. He saw it now, all around him. He couldn't escape the memory of dead friends, because their ashes were everywhere here, mixed with the sands of Tatooine. And he could not allow their loss to pass over him, through him, as he was taught.
Jedi do not mourn because they do not feel attachment.
Obi-Wan knew more than anyone the rhetoric, had recited it countless times as fellow Jedi died, were killed fighting in the war. Keeping faith, knowing in his gut that they'd win somehow, and the loss of life would be vindicated. Would be awarded more meaning than his grief could rightfully warrant them.
But the war had meant nothing, he reminded himself. Had been a painstakingly constructed and enacted scheme. The war had been a game, nothing more than an illusion.
No, he corrected, the war had been real, the destruction had been real, the lives of his friends were truly forfeit, but the stakes, the reasons. These were the illusions.
Obi-Wan began walking a little more swiftly, aware of the heat, but not suffering in its grip. He could feel a potency of Force in it that soothed him, even if only for the briefest of instants.
Tatooine's desolate landscape held no answers for him. He knew the true history, knew of its fall. Tatooine was once a beautiful place, not like now. A millenia ago, instead of sand there were large oceans and a world-spanning jungle. Then a strange, Force-sensitive race called the Rakata, destroyed the biosphere. They bombarded the planet from orbit. Greed, and rage, and war with themselves. And they killed this world, "glassed" the planet, fusing the silica in the soil into glass. And they boiled its oceans away.
He imagined the cry of pain, the disturbance in the Force when the planet itself was punished for the crimes of its tenants. The glass dissolved over time into sand. Then there was only the sand.
Obi-Wan could no longer hear any resonance of life within the dunes surrounding him. The sand was dry as dust. The ash of this world. The ash of the Force.
And now, it's a fitting graveyard for the memories of his friends.
He'd been walking for hours. He didn't have a plan. He'd given the infant to Lars and his young wife, as was decided, but looking into their faces he had felt an inkling of doubt. They were so young. So young, that even the immensity of the suns had not wrinkled their faces yet. The male, Owen, had not protested overmuch when Obi Wan presented the child, but there was so much uncertainty in his eyes. So much fear. Surely Anakin was not this young? These two in front of him were children, their eyes fearful of what he had told them.
Obi-Wan explained as best he could to the young couple. He told them of the Emperor, how he would search for the baby. He told them Anakin was dead.
And perhaps it was true.
No, Obi-Wan shook his head to himself. His feelings told him the unutterable truth. Anakin's body had indeed been kept alive. But Obi-Wan also knew by the deep feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach that this was not a natural existence any longer, but one of alien, unfeeling metal. Artifice had replaced the passion and intense energy of his friend, cooling it, and crafting a new form of energy—the calm, emotionless, icy liquid fire wielded only by death.
Obi-Wan saw it sometimes when he closed his eyes, the hard, black material masking Anakin's familiar, fair features. He could feel the constant pain that echoed through his friend's phantom limbs.
But there, too, was something else, something more ennervating than pain at work within Anakin's heart, it was very slowly hollowing out the last remnant of his humanity, replacing it with hatred cold as ice. More machine, now than man, Obi-Wan felt rather than knew.
His old friend was truly gone, and the unnatural spectre inhabiting what remained of his body was a machination so terrible it could only be enlivened by the Dark side.
Was this part of the plan? Anakin, the Chosen One, encased in a suit of living death, while he, Obi-Wan, wandered the badlands of a planet so far from the Core it was practically in another universe?
And what of the children? These offspring of Anakin's. Son and daughter to a dead mother and a father whose life now turned to bringing only death.
Their poor mother. Obi-Wan felt sick, recalling the way Anakin'a invisible fist closed around her throat. In the end, Anakin had resorted to an unforgivable act, contorting the Force to crush the air from his beloved's body. His heart had been twisted, wielded against him.
Padme deserved better. Obi-Wan clenched his jaw as the familiar lump of guilt rose in his throat again. Obi-Wan had watched her with Anakin time and again, watched their connection grow. He'd known what was going on, had a vague sense that they were…involved.
He remembered when he first realized the relationship had furthered beyond friendship. When they returned from the Outer Rim one day at the beginning of the War, before there were crowds to greet them, Obi-Wan remembered. Obi-Wan had departed their ship and moved on toward the building at the end of the landing strip. Anakin had lingered, waiting. Obi-Wan continued to walk, but not before he watched the young man move toward a person standing in the shadow of a stone pillar. Obi-Wan had just been able to make out a Senatorial robe on a slight frame, but he hadn't needed to see the garb to know the person. He'd known instinctively who it was.
Obi-Wan had been able to sense the way in which Anakin's mind did not concentrate solely on the Force, on the Jedi way. He was also very aware of Anakin's inability to accept that which he wanted but could not have, to be the final word. Obi-Wan could feel the young man's conflict, his division in interest. And knew it was a conflict that divided his heart.
But Obi-Wan hadn't stopped it. He hadn't intercepted them before momentum carried their relationship to the point of no return. And now, Padme was dead. Another friend whose memory sifted with the sands in front of his feet.
The boy child had not cried while in Obi-Wan's guardianship. It seemed unnatural, but then, this child had already seen death. So young, and yet touched by death. The simple act of breathing on their part catalyzed all Obi-Wan had known into oblivion.
What were they heir to? Obi-Wan had looked time and again into their futures, but could not see beyond the ocean of sand surrounding him for miles.
If this was the means to an end, he could not sense the end coming to pass within his scope of vision.
Obi-Wan could no longer feel certain about anything. He'd always had an abiding faith that the Force would see him through, deliver him to the correct destination. But now, now, the future was only the swirling fog of sand in front of him.
He wished Qui-Gon were here. Qui-Gon would only laugh at his lack of vision. Assure him that the Force was far bigger than he, and its design reached farther than he could ever comprehend. Tell him he couldn't see it, because his eyes were open.
Obi-Wan missed his Master so sharply sometimes. He hadn't until this moment allowed himself to fully feel that pang of loss and the way it resonated deeply within the most secret part of his heart.
Jedi don't mourn. But Obi-Wan wasn't sure he could simply allow his grief to evaporate. Be absorbed into that great invisible grid binding all, uniting the spirits of the dead, making them One. He'd always been taught not to miss the dead, they were enveloped in the totality of the Force.
But he had lost so much, it was hard to find a quiet center in his mind. Hard to feel now, that he was at peace and happy for those who had died.
Why should he not grieve, now, when the universe as he knew it was all but lost?
He rememebered Yoda's words. He could speak again with Qui-Gon. It was not difficult. He resolved to do so, to achieve this power.
Looking up, Obi-Wan discovered a rock face had jutted into view some distance away. Feeling a surge in the Force push him toward it, he began to walk in its direction, determined. He would watch over the child, the son of Anakin.
He would guard his childhood from the many dangers on this wild planet of sand and rock. And when the boy was old enough, Obi-Wan would teach him. Obi-Wan reflexively reached down to touch the lightsaber hanging from his belt. He had taken Anakin's, and the sheathed weapon hung parallel to his own. Obi-Wan would place Anakin's lightsaber in his son's hands and see the boy wield toward a different end than his father had chosen.
He would repair his debt owed to Anakin, and to Padme. He would seek the balance prophesied, would follow the Force through to its final design.
Obi-Wan could not forgive himself, could not relieve his guilt, but he could honor his dead friends by protecting their memory. A memory which now seemed to be encased in the body of a tiny baby.
And maybe, just maybe, if he saved this boy from the darker fate of his father, he could begin to find salvation himself. Gaining ground swiftly toward the great rock face ahead, Obi-Wan looked to the Western sky. The two suns had begun to set and were brilliant and red in the darkening light. Their power diminished, resting, waiting till the planet's rotation brought them back around to their rightful place, high in the arid skies.
Two ancient sentinels, watching over the planet and trusting in its continued revolutions around the galaxy.
Now these suns had seen another generation of Skywalker blood brought here, where it seemed he and his descendents were fated always to return. And he, Obi-Wan, would watch with these eternal suns as the son of Skywalker grew to fulfill his destiny. Whatever that would be.
The desert was his home now. A graveyard thousands of years old seemed an appropriate location for one who walked with ghosts. As Obi-Wan set his foot upon the ledge of rock leading up, up to the top of this stone plateau, he turned to watch the suns sink finally beneath the horizon. Yes, he thought. Yes, I understand.
Master. He called silently, climbing farther up the formation. Master, I'm ready. The darkness was all around him now, he could barely see the rock on which he stood. Obi-Wan continued to climb, closing his eyes and allowing the Force to place his feet on sure footing. He felt the Force swell and opened his eyes, surprised.
In the all-consuming darkness, he saw a pale blue light shining above him.