Haunted
The purple moonbeams on the sleepy garden walls were beautiful, completely at odds with the monster that slept within. The monster had disturbed him. A terrible churning inside of his stomach. Something wasn't right. Stretching out with the force, Obi-wan searched. Luke seemed fine, although far away with Owen and Beru. He wasn't in trouble.
What was the dream he was having? It must have been about Anakin again.
There was nothing which could console Obi-wan. He had left Anakin there to die. Although ordered to destroy the knight, Obi-wan would have done anything to save Anakin. Too bad there was no reasoning left in the boy. Now, Obi-wan paid the price for what his friend, the chosen one, had done. A lifetime of guilt now lay with Obi-wan. Nothing would change the fact that he had left his closest friend on Mustafar and burning. Anakin had become the most horrible menace in the galaxy, Darth Vader, because Obi-wan had been blind.
Obi-wan sat up and peered into the darkness of the small hovel he now inhabited. Close enough to Luke to watch over him and be where the child could easily find him. And far enough away from people to hide the shame of what he had done. What he had become. What was he exactly?
The jedi were long gone. He was maybe the last of them. There had been no contact between any of them since the clones had turned on them all. He couldn't call himself a jedi because he had left one behind, even though the one was broken and following a dark and destructive path. A younger, idealistic Obi-wan would have saved the boy from the fire and the dark side. Unfortunately he was wasn't that young and idealistic anymore.
Rubbing his face, Obi-wan tried to push the thoughts out of his mind. There was nothing he, or anybody else for that matter, could have done for Anakin. Blinded by love and attachment, his brother would have done anything he could to keep her alive. And what of Padme? Was Obi-wan not responsible for her death too? Hiding aboard her ship and following her to where he knew Anakin would be. He had killed the senator too. And how many others had he been responsible for?
The cries of younglings continued to ring in his ears, although he was surely alone here in the abrasive desert. When would it stop? He hadn't witnessed the deaths first hand, but he knew that he could have stopped the newly named Darth Vader from cutting down every hope of the jedi order. Still he had done nothing. Nothing.
Aggravated at himself, Obi-wan stood abruptly and kicked the chair which stood next to the bed. It toppled noisily to the floor, but there was no one to hear it but himself. There was no one to share the anger with and he knew to follow the path of anger was the dark side. Still it made him feel better.
Stopping short, Obi-wan flopped back into his bed. Tears stung his eyes as the last moments he had with Anakin came to him again. His brother, his friend, his student screaming at the top of his lungs about how he hated him. Although many years had passed, the pain was fresh and new and made Obi-wan sob silently into the darkness.
He wanted to shout out "Why Anakin? Why would you do this to us, to you, to your children?" But the idea seemed futile. Who would hear, but himself? Would that ease his pain any?
Wiping the tears away with the back of his hand, Obi-wan stared at the domed ceiling of his home. Whatever he had done in the past, Luke was the answer to the wrongs of the galaxy. Obi-wan knew it and somehow, he assumed, Yoda had known too. He had made sure that Luke was under Obi-wan's protection.
Maybe he wasn't such a failure after all. His eyelids closed softly as he made peace with himself. Maybe there was hope yet, he thought as the desert sang him back to sleep.