Making the Dead, a star wars fanfic

Making the Dead

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me. Response to an old Shakespeare Quote Challenge.

A post-ROTS AU. Padme, Anakin, Obi-Wan.

Thou common friend, that's without faith or love, For such is a friend now; treacherous man! Thou hast beguiled my hopes; nought but mine eye Could have persuaded me: now I dare not say I have one friend alive; thou wouldst disprove me. Who should be trusted, when one's own right hand Is perjured to the bosom? Valentine, Two Gentlemen of Verona Act 5

Somehow, the flesh had melted into the wind. Not his own flesh. No, his own was still thick and prone to red, prickled rashes. But his flesh, the much sought-after flesh, had disappeared into undetectable vapor.

Like a ghost. An undead ghost.

But what could be done about an undead ghost?

He knew the answer. It was simple.

Undead ghosts needed to be made dead. And he knew how to make death. It was easy, easier than giving life.

He just needed to catch the wind.

The wind was the hoary breath of a dragon that lived under the dunes. That was why it radiated such heat, why it scratched the children's cheeks when they ran fast in the wind.

But when they informed their mother of this, she shook her head, dark hair pulled by the same sharp tumult, and told them it was a wonder their big imaginations could fit inside their small, child-sized heads. She ruffled their hair-light and dark-and laughed a laugh lighter than the wind.

One of the children, the girl with hair as long and as dark as her mother's, thought that everyone everywhere must have heard the laughter.

It felt like someone had heard it, at least.

The air had grown still. But it really hadn't even been a growth.

The air had stopped all at once.

Anakin thought that was strange, considering the window was open.

He wiped the sweat from his brow and looked back down at the food spread out before him. Everyone had their preferences, and it always took him a moment to remember what they were.

He rolled the round, flat bread, then unrolled it, staring into the cracked nooks of the wall. When he focused on it too long, the wall became skin, and each nook was a pore, and for a second he would imagine blood running out of them.

But that was just his big imagination, which was even bigger than his children's, and lamented with counterfeit pangs of suffering by his wife. They all knew he could say strange things, but he never mentioned what he saw-what he pretended to see-in the walls.

The lapse in coherent thought resurrected the particular tastes of both the children, and he left sauce out of the boy's, but added kusab shavings, and applied a liberal glob of sauce to the girl's, but forewent the bright green kusab.

He and his wife shared the same taste—which did not surprise him.

Anakin finished laying out the glasses and containers, then walked outside to herd everyone in for dinner.

The children were digging deep holes in the sand, and dropping stoned down into them. They looked like two shimmering specks on the pale, earthen backcloth of the desert.

And his wife was standing further out, her back to him, talking…to someone.

Anakin told the children quietly to go inside. They gathered the rest of their rocks into the folds of their clothes, then hurried past him.

He felt them enter the house. And he felt his wife's distress, sheeting over him in cold, jittery starts.

"Padme?" He called.

Walking up to her, Anakin could see her shoulders tense as she turned. "Anakin," she said, "Someone is here to see you."

Her eyes looked red from crying, but her face was dry as stone. "He…He wants to talk to you."

Anakin studied the man. He was average in build, with clothes that blended with the sand, and skin that had the angry tinge of burn. His hair was light, and his beard was short and ill kempt. His eyes were blue, only blue. His eyes looked as if they had never felt tears.

He didn't recognize this man. And when Padme told him his name was Obi-Wan Kenobi, he didn't recognize that, either.

Aside from the unsettling impact his arrival had on Padme, Anakin disliked Obi-Wan Kenobi because he had only prepared food for the four of them.

Fortunately, Obi-Wan Kenobi said that he wasn't hungry. He just watched everyone else eat. Except Padme, who touched the food with her fork, but never brought it in the direction of her compressed mouth.

She was far too occupied watching Obi-Wan.

"Mom, Luke's swirling together everything on his plate. It looks gross!"

Padme glanced at her. "Leia, mind your own plate before your worry about your brother's."

The girl made a face, but relented.

After the meal, Padme told the children to play in Leia's room. Luke insisted on going to his own room, where all his stuff was, but Padme told him they needed to play together.

She shut the door and went into the common room, where Obi-Wan was sitting, watching Anakin clean up the dishes. His fingers moved absently over a patch of puckered scarlet that covered his left wrist.

"Why did you have to come here?" She said to Obi-Wan in a low, desolate voice.

He didn't answer her.

Because everything for him, at this moment, was standing in the confining little kitchen, obliviously wiping debris from a plate.

An itch flared on the side of his face. His fingernails were ragged, but their scratch was more satisfying. When Anakin walked into the common room, Obi-Wan sat up.

"I'd like to talk to you alone," he said to Anakin.

Anakin found Padme's eyes. They were telling him to stay with her, in their house.

He couldn't decide what Obi-Wan Kenobi's eyes were telling him, but he followed the man outside nevertheless.

The wind had picked up again.

Anakin saw it ravage the ends of Obi-Wan Kenobi's cloak, and bring a new flush to the corners around his nose.

"She knew how to hide you."

Anakin frowned. "I don't have any idea what you're talking about."

The other man snorted. "Even from yourself. She hid you even from yourself, didn't she?"

"Padme?"

"Yes."

"No…no." Anakin shook his head, flustered. "What would she be hiding me from? How do you know her? Why do you think you know me?"

Obi-Wan Kenobi stared at him, but it was more than staring. Anakin felt like his eyes were being punctured. He swallowed the dense, wet coil that had gathered in his throat. "What happened to you…were you in a fire?"

"I was burned," Obi-Wan Kenobi answered, "and it just doesn't heal." He took a step towards Anakin. "I've tried everything. But it's still there. Every. Single. Day."

Anakin tried not to look at the crimson shine of Obi-Wan Kenobi's skin; close to him, he could see where the wiry bristles of the beard hid hard-melted sections of the man's jaw. "I'm sorry, but I'm not understanding what this has to do with me."

"What does this have to do with you?" Obi-Wan had to laugh, because it wasn't funny at all. "It has everything to do with you! You've been sheltered from the darkness you created!"

"Anakin!"

He saw Padme rushing toward them, her clothes whipping across her, voluminous and dark, like a blindfold.

Obi-Wan turned back to Anakin and gripped his shoulders. "It isn't fair that you should be allowed to forget, when everyone else must remember. I delivered your children, and you delivered me to hell. Why is the murderer saved from his nightmares?"

"Obi-Wan, please, leave him alone!"

Obi-Wan threw his gaze toward her but kept his hands clenched around Anakin's sleeves. "Palpatine is dead, Padme. You wouldn't know it out here in your beautiful isolation, but he's dead. He had to be killed and I killed him. I burned him up, thinking that it would stop my burning, but it didn't.

"Nothing stops it. Something has to stop it."

Padme shook her head violently, trying to thrust herself in between Obi-Wan and Anakin.

She knew the flames were still alive, as they'd been that day on Mustafar. After Anakin left her unconscious, she had awoken on her own ship, with Obi-Wan's face a muted, soft shape above her. He had not told her anything.

The need had erupted in her body, then, to give birth. There was no time to leave the shadowed miasma, to even put the ship in orbit.

Obi-Wan had been there to hold the babies as they took their first real breaths. He waited for her to recover a little before he handed them gently over to her.

He had told her they needed to take off, to leave Mustafar.

But she looked down into the creased faces of her children, and could not go without Anakin. She had stilled herself to the heart, and asked where her husband was, what Obi-Wan had done to him.

"I protected myself, so I could protect you. To protect your children, in a way that I couldn't protect the younglings."

Padme had shrunk against the pillows. "He isn't dead. Tell me he isn't dead, Obi-Wan. You—You didn't…"

"Don't worry, my dear Senator. Vader lives still." Appearing in the doorway, Palpatine drew out a slow, pointed smile. "Master Kenobi is not so bloodthirsty as the rest of the Jedi."

Padme cradled the twins closer, trying to hear them, smell them, feel them above all else. "Anakin's alive?" Tears slipped hot from the corners of her eyes, but she couldn't decide why anymore. "Wh-Where is he?"

"In incubation. Our last little Jedi was not completely merciful. I'm afraid he's rather useless to me now." His black cloak whispered against the floor as he moved to her bedside. "Although Skywalker blood is another thing entirely."

"That won't work" Obi-Wan said, stepping forward. "The children are not touched with the Force any more than Padme is."

The laugh had been jagged, acidic. "Impossible."

"It's true." Obi-Wan continued, calmer than Padme had seen him since this mess and massacre began. "I delivered them myself. There's nothing there."

"And I would trust the word of Obi-Wan Kenobi?" Palpatine snarled, pressing a bleached, mottled hand on both tiny foreheads.

Padme looked desperately toward Obi-Wan, but his face was expressionless, though his eyes were paler.

"No…." Palpatine withdrew a moment later, "No, they must be…" He stepped back with something like disgust, as if from merely touching the newborns he had contracted a soul-sucking disease. "This is abominable!"

Padme flinched. In the Emperor's nearly colorless eyes, she saw the possibility of death, for herself and her children.

"The Skywalkers are useless to you now," Obi-Wan approached Palpatine, "But the Empire is still fresh, in need of leaders. Take me instead."

Padme's mind had not unfrozen until Obi-Wan was gone. Then she realized that he had shielded the power welling in the babies from Palpatine, sacrificing himself so that they could escape.

She came back to Mustafar as soon as she could, but couldn't find Anakin.

In the end, he had found her.

He was visibly scarred, but she could still see him. His memory was damaged, yet he remembered her. He told her that he didn't want the Darkness anymore.

So she embraced him, and arranged to have all the shadows taken from him. What he had to forget was replaced with new memories, of children laughing and growing, a home on Tatooine where Palpatine could not find him. It became obvious to her that the Sith had lied to her; he still wanted Anakin, despite his impairments.

She had always hoped, deeply, that Obi-Wan was alright.

Padme knew that he wasn't. The level gaze was uneven now, too unhindered. And his body was more a ruin than Anakin's had been.

"You killed Palpatine. Now it can be over, Obi-Wan. Don't you want it to be over?"

Obi-Wan dropped his hands from Anakin. The wind blew the limp hair out of his face. "Of course I want it to be over! That's why I'm here, Padme!"

"And what are you going to accomplish here? Palpatine is dead. There's no one to fight anymore. Anakin isn't your enemy now. And neither am I."

Obi-Wan hid his burst of laughter behind a rough, cracked hand. "You have always been the enemy! You've been the inspiration for his evil! Do you know what he did to me, Padme?"

She looked at Anakin's bewildered face, then closed her eyes against the coming words.

"He burned me. Palpatine told him to do it, and he burned me," his voice was shaking, "I could feel it, every moment, from the hairs on my skin into the deepest fibers of my brain. I never stop feeling it.

"But he doesn't have to remember that, does he? He doesn't have to remember, or feel guilt. You and he live in this dream you've created. Why is it that you get him, the way he was before? Why is he here, while I'm in hell, forced to remember everything? You, you and Palpatrine, ruined him! I just want to forget, but I…I can't…"

Padme pulled him into a fierce embrace, tucking his face against her shoulder. Slowly, he stilled, and she felt warmth where his tears touched her.

The pain was different this time, Obi-Wan decided, as it lanced through his chest.

This time it was cold. The cold was better.

Padme looked down as Obi-Wan slid out of her arms, onto the sand. Red blossomed on his chest, where a hole had formed, as if from nothing.

Anakin was standing above Obi-Wan, holding a knife from the kitchen. He had brought it with him, when he thought Obi-Wan Kenobi was a stranger. He had only intended to ward him off with it.

But when it came to him that the man was telling the truth, Anakin knew he had to kill him.

Padme was gaping at him, but he didn't look at her. He dropped the fatal shard from his hand and sat on the ground, beside the body. The blood seeped into the sand, as if rushing into open pores.

He remained there in wordless vigil until sunset, when he went inside, kissed the children in their beds, and walked out to where his friend was waiting for him.

And like a trusted companion, the knife did what he wanted, because it was the best thing for him.

Padme dug two holes, but instead of rocks, she filled them with the bodies of her husband and old friend.

When the earth was smooth again, she could still see them.

She found she could not be angry. She had spent her time, however brief, with Anakin. And she knew the real Anakin, the one Obi-Wan had lost, was with him now. Maybe there was a temple in death, where they couldn't remember anything anymore.

The children knew things were different now, but they still ran barefoot through the dunes, giggling and shouting, the wind tossing their hair.

But the dragon no longer breathed the awful kind of wind. Two warriors had gone to the very core of the planet to slay it.

Now the air touched their faces lightly, like a hand, or a brief ring of laughter.