Two Roads Diverged
Summary: After the death of Qui-Gon in the battle with Darth Maul, Obi-Wan finds himself lost without a master, but when he finds himself in an alternate universe after and accident, will it be for good or for worse. Because in this universe, rather than Xanatos turning, it was him.
Disclaimer: I do not own any recognizable characters and I do not get paid for writing this. This work is out done for enjoyment. Please don't sue me.
Perhaps it is a mistake to write this, perhaps it is a blessing. Where is the logic in writing something that cannot and will not be read? What is the point in savoring memories that were not meant to be remembered; memories of people that I would never see or hear from again, either in this place or in any other? Yet why do I continue these passages of pain? Why do I beg the ghost of the past to come haunt and terrorize me?
Unfortunately, I know the answer. Because despite what pain I suffer now, trapped in the paradox of wanting to forget yet needing to remember, it is nothing compared to what the torture would be if I were to loose all those hopes and dreams of the past, despite the fact that they are long dead. So now I record them, these long tragic memoirs of my pathetic life.
But I still see no logic in this; no logic because this is madness. He is gone. No matter what I come to scribble down now, no matter how hard I want or need him, he is gone, lost forever to become a hazy figure in the dark abyss of my mind, or a myriad of letters and phrases haphazardly scratched onto the blank parchment of my journal. Ironically, it was he who first insisted I keep this godforsaken thing.
Oh how I long for his presence beside me again, the father of my heart. Oh God, how it hurts to know that tomorrow he would not be there to greet the dawn with me and that I would be alone tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. An endless eternities of empty tomorrows has now become my living purgatory. Oh and how it hurts and tears at my bleeding heart to know, maybe I have always known, that to the very end, I was nothing more to him than what my title claimed. His apprentice, I was, his padawan, but never can I be what I have longed for my entire life. I could not be to him what I strived to be since the day I first lay my child's eyes on his towering form.
Twelve years it was. Twelve years of dwelling together under the same roof, twelve hard years of pushing myself to the very edge trying to reach perfection as to be worthy of his presence, and it was only after a grueling passage of time did I reach the point of being considered tolerable. But what? What was the point of it all?
Twelve years of acquaintance and hard-won friendship, or at least I hope it was friendship, all thrown to the dust with the arrival a complete stranger. Within the short amount of time with Anakin, he had shown the boy more tender care that I had ever hoped to receive in my life.
It was, no, it is wrong of me to be jealous of the boy. It was not his fault that he was more special than I can ever dream of being. It was not his fault that his innocence and suffering had drawn Master Jinn away from me.
No, it was no one's fault that I could not hold onto what had never been mine to keep. Oh, but how I had wanted it and still do. May the Force forgive me but I need it still. But how could I need what I never had?
It doesn't matter now. I was not worthy of it. That fateful day was the proof of it all. The Force had decreed that I was no longer permitted to have such a blessing in my life any longer and had taken him from me. And I was not strong enough to at least defend my right. He is gone now, because I'd failed him.
I'd watch as he was cut down by the sith. I'd stood and watched as he fell to the ground from that fatal wound. And then, I'd held him as he died in my arm.
Call it vanity, but I had hoped, that with his parting breathe, he might just, just, tell me those words I'd long for my whole life. But no, it was not I that who resided in his dying mind. No, it was Anakin.
"Promise me you will train him." He had said.
Perhaps, in a way, this was an honor I didn't deserve. The honor to train the Chosen One. But I would pass up that honor for it is not mine to uphold, but for him, my brave master, whose life is now a memory of the past all because of the failure of his careless padawan.
He dropped the writing utensil on the open book, unable to go on. As the turmoil of the past flooded into his mind, he laid down upon the cot and closed his eye, curling his body into a fetal position as if to ward of the torrent. He refused to cry again. After spending two days locked in his temporary compartment with a constant stream of salty tears running down his face, Obi-wan Kenobi was now sick of crying. Not that he could have if he'd wanted to. It seemed that once you try hard enough, you could actually run out of tear.
"Surprising," He thought, feeling somewhat detached from the real world.
It's been two days since the funeral pyre of his master was burned, two days since Qui-Gin Jinn's death had been publicized for all of Naboo to mourn, just like an oversized funeral.
He had never liked funeral. Not just because they were a ritual to part with the dead, it was just the insincerity that was always present at them that troubled him. Of course there were those who mourned, truly mourned. Family, close friends, maybe even a few rivals who would mourn for the lack of competition, these were the people who would have a true purpose of attending the ceremony. But there were others. Some of whom had never known the dead, or even worse, known and hated the dead and was there to simply celebrate their passing.
Obi-wan couldn't really picture anyone thinking of his master in that way.
A sudden wave of fatigue hit him. It was then that he realized how long it had been since he had last slept. All these pondering seemed to be taking more out of him than he thought.
With a defeated sight, he made a wild swing of his arm and swiped the journal to his chest, becoming more and more lethargic each passing second. A few more minutes of fidgeting left him clutching the journal to his chest with one hand and the familiar river-rock in the other. The warm smoothness pressing against his palm calmed his mind.
And as his mind began to fade to the comfort of sleep, he whispered to the dark corners of his room, "Master..."
He wasn't quite sure what had woke him, but it was in an instant that he found himself wide-eyed, completely awake and sweating profusely. Still in somewhat of a daze, he pushed himself off the ground, surprised to find he was lying face down. Cold salty droplets ran down his face in rivulets, dripping from his forehead and nose to dirt.
He jerked upwards, throwing himself on his feet. What the hell; dirt? Where was he? In a last attempt at calming himself, he reached out to the force...and bit down a cry of frustration. It wasn't that the force wasn't there, but its presence was different now. Changed. He couldn't be sure what it was.
To hell with it all, he wasn't sure of anything. He'd never felt so lost in his whole entire life. The force, oh gods, even the force had changed. What was going on?
He stumbled backwards, slipping and sliding of unidentifiable objects strewn all around the dark room. In the dim moonlight filtering in from the slashed canvas roof Obi-wan was only able to make out shadows that seemed to occupy too much of this dank area. Like a drunken man he swaggered to and fro as he made his way through the land mine of shadowed items waiting to trip him.
Unfortunately, it did not matter. With all of his attention focused on the ground, trying to see through the darkness, he failed to notice he had reached the other side of the room. It was a painful surprise when his face came into a rather hard contact with opposing wall. In shock, he took a few steps backwards and promptly slipped on one of the mysterious bumps. The commotion that fallowed was all due to the result of his head hitting the edge of something during the process of his fall, and causing that something to throw what he'd suppose was a vase of some sort into the air. It crashed into the wall adjacent to it and knocked down a nearby pole. Regrettably, that pole had been holding up the canvas sheet which served as a roof. And thus, the sheet fell, showering Obi-wan with a heavy rain of dust and sand.
After a moment, Obi-wan pushed the thick fabric off himself, coughing slightly at the dust particles still floating in the air. As he began to stand, he took a moment to survey his surroundings. A good thing had resulted from the earlier incident. Now that the canvas was torn away, moonlight flooded the room, or at least, what he had earlier presumed to be a room. With the benefit of sight, he could now see that though the four walls erected around him formed the typical square shape, there was nothing typical about this place at all.
He looked down at the ground. Although canvas and dust covered almost everything, there were a few survivors of the collapsing. He gasped when he saw them.
Weapons, blasters of all shapes and sizes filled a crate on the far corner. Turning to his left he saw what seemed like a madman's holiday gifts. Piles of torture devices ranging from tiny pin-like needles, to full sized whips, some even laden down with spikes thick and thin, there was even a head shaped device that was spiked on the inside.
Without even realizing, Obi-wan shuddered to think he had been wandering blindly through this death trap. Tearing his eyes away from the terrifying sight, he focused instead on the room itself. As far as he could tell there was no way in or out, except maybe through the roof. Which brought him back to the biggest mystery of all: what the hell was he doing here?
He walked slowly to the nearest wall and leaned back against it. Weariness swept over him again. Why now of all times? Did he not have enough already? Was the force punishing him for his failures?
The last question struck a nerve. With a defeated sigh he let his body slack slightly and slid down. What he needed now was rest. He knew he should be heading back, whichever way back was, but he couldn't work up the urgency to start. He knew he should figure out why and how he was here, but he didn't feel like caring too much about it. It was pointless right now. Just like about everything else in his life. He tilted his head back and stared at the myriad of stars.
'Well, minus the murder devices over there and the fact that I'm lost, it's kind of nice here.' He thought to himself, though somewhat sarcastically.
But just as he was about to close his eyes, a familiar hissing reached his ear and through his slitted eyes he caught the light of something green. This was right before that 'something green' came swinging down at him. He had jumped out of the way at the last second. Once again he found himself wide awake and facing another mystery. This time however, the mystery seemed set on killing him.
Acting completely on instinct, his hands instantly went to his waist. He was relieved to find that the hilt of the saber was indeed secured there. He did not stop to contemplate the fact he had went to bed without wearing even his belt, nor that hilt, which he'd had since his coming of thirteen, now felt somewhat foreign in his grasp.
It was not until he switched it on that he realized why. Instead of the blue that had always sprung from it, the hilt now produced instead that horrid blazing red of a sith blade.
Obi-wan stared. "What –?"
Time was not on his side tonight. Immediately after igniting his blade, or whoever's blade he was now stuck with, the dark figure before him attacked again. He just barely managed to parry what might have been a lethal blow.
"You're not concentrating."
Obi-wan stiffened and shivered as he felt the goose bumps running down his arms and neck. That voice, so familiar and yet he could not place his finger on where he'd heard it.
"You hesitate, Sith? That is not you're style." That oh so familiar voiced mocked.
Obi-wan couldn't describe what he felt but something bubbled up inside him. The man had just called him a sith?
"What did you call me?" He couldn't resist the urge to ask. He'd now identified the bubbling to be anger, and he couldn't help but be slightly surprised that he didn't care.
"Nothing other than what you are." A straight-forward reply. Nothing less than what he'd asked for. But his reaction to that answer shocked even himself. Of course he was confused, but that could not support the anger that took over without warning. And then force came flooding back to him. He finally realized what that 'change' in the force was. It felt foreign to him now, just like the saber in his hand. It felt dark. Unfortunately, he failed to notice the saber's hilt was now twice the length of his own.
Obi-wan couldn't remember everything what happened. One minute he was standing there unable to move due to the shock of this strange force, the next he found himself fighting as he'd never had before. Malicious, every move he made was hateful, out of anger. But he felt detach from all that. It was as if he were watching himself from outside his body but through his eyes. He couldn't see himself, but he still knew. He had let the anger take over and now he could not stop it.
Using the force, he pushed himself high into the air, raising the saber high above his head. Vaguely, he noted with a wild sense of exhilaration, he'd never been able to throw himself quite as high as he did just now. As he came down, he swung the saber in a huge arch, not caring that if it makes contact with the opponent, he would be sliced in half in a second. Obi-wan was much too caught up in the excitement of the fight to notice much anymore.
Fortunately, the man was quicker than Obi-wan had originally thought him to be. In the last possible second before the saber would have made contact, the man had dodge out of the way, barely saving his life. But before Obi-wan could so much as sigh over the small loss, the man came charging back at him. Reacting completely on instinct, Obi-wan flew into action. Performing maneuvers which he'd never learned, he managed to brush off most of the man's attacks. However, a few slipped through his defenses and he soon found himself brandishing quite a few burns. The man fared no better. If anything, Obi-wan had given much more dire wounds.
"I'm winning, old man." Obi-wan whispered to the man when the clashing of sabers brought them to a closer range.
"The Dark never wins." His opponent countered, pushing him away with both a shove with his saber and through the force. Obi-wan caught himself easily. He dropped down into a battle stance in time with the mysterious man. Just as he planned to attack, Obi-wan froze and stared. Across from him stood the man, stooped in his offensive position, but he was distracted by something beyond the stranger.
Behind the man was the wall, but it was what was being reflected off the wall the made him stare. The walls were actually made of a type of black stone, maybe onyx. However, in the moonlight, it acted like a mirror, and Obi-wan clearly saw himself.
"Wha—"He breathed. "Where am I?"
He dropped his saber, completely forgetting about the man. In desperation, he turned to his left and then his right, both of these walls reflected just as the other did. For the first time in his life, Obi-wan wanted to drop everything and just start bawling. He whirled around and ran to the closest wall. Not caring or even knowing he was exposing his backside to an opponent, he dropped to his knees in front it.
The face staring back at him, though displaying the same shock and horror, was not the face he had seen the last time he'd bother looking in a mirror. His eyes were the same blue, his hair the same tawny brown, his nose and mouth were the same, but it was different. He felt his head and confirmed that the padawan braid was indeed gone. He felt his face, feeling the slight break in the skin where the wall showed his scar that ran over the bridge of his eyebrow and down over his cheek. It was dull color now, almost blending in completely with the rest of his face, almost, but not quite.
"Must have been made a long time ago." He thought. Scars tended to take a while to fade.
Going back to his head, Obi-wan was amazed by the length of his supposedly close cropped hair. Now, it was tied back into a short tail. He hastily untied it. The precious padawan braid was gone and in lieu of it hung a mass of unevenly chopped hair. It took a while for the realization to actually hit.
When it did, he began to rub the wall as if that could change the image it showed. When that failed, he resorted to banging his fist on it. He was desperate to see himself. Just a glimpse. He flew into a frenzied fist fight with the wall. But even as the skin on his knuckles began to tear and blood began to smear on it, the wall remained unyielding and the image remained the same.
"Where am I," He chanted over and over again as he pummeled the wall. He became progressively louder as his fight became more and more frantic. Footsteps came from behind him but he didn't care. He didn't even react when he heard the lightsaber being ignited, except stop his pounding and settled for staring dejectedly at the mirrored image. He knew that the man was raising his saber to put an end to him, but he couldn't work up the energy to care. To him, this was some horrible nightmare and he was hoping to wake from it soon. But still, he felt he ought to face his death. So as the saber came whistling down, Obi-wan turned around. When he looked up, he caught a glimpse of the face beneath the hood but it was interrupted by a glare of green light. Pain flared from his neck and then everything stopped.
Obi-wan gasped as he jumped into an upward position. His journal tumbled from his chest along with the river stone. He stared dubiously at them.
"What..." But his question stopped dead when he looked around and saw his room. He
looked down and saw the mattress of the bed he had been sleeping in.
"It was a dream afterall?" He thought, mixed feeling rising in him. He didn't know why but he found himself running to the 'fresher. When he reached it , he switched on the lights and closed his eyes.
"Ridiculous. Stupid idiotic dumass." He thought before taking a deep breath and opening them. He smiled with relief when he saw his old reflection staring back at him. This was the first real smile he'd had in days. It was real stupid of him to let a dream get to him like that but couldn't help but laugh to see himself again.
He was about to leave when something else caught his eye. Inching closer to the mirror, he reached up and tugged the collar of his sleeping robe down. There, beneath it, his skin was burned and raw, as if struck by a light saber.
TBC...
Thank you for reading. Please tell me if I should continue. Constructive criticism are welcomed. This is my first time writing and I would really love to know how I could improve.
Thank you again.
-T.N.D
