Night ruled the beach, ebony ocean and sky crowned in starlight.
It taunted Obi-Wan as he blindly ran along the shore as fast as he could, splashing through the onyx glass of the waves washing up beneath his feet. His footprints vanished every time the ocean rolled up: nothing behind him, no sign he had ever walked and lived and hoped and feared.
Nothing ahead of him. Only darkness and the sharp, grim teeth of that fear working into his heart as he flew past the spot he and Anakin had met, the impression of where the other man had sunk to his knees in the sand filling with shallow puddles as the tide drifted in.
Please let them be safe.
The voice of logic and reason, usually given first say in Obi-Wan's decisions, was silent as he ran. There was no justifiable reason to pursue at all the mad dog his padawan had become, much less one to follow him into the tomb his demented wife was making for the both of them. With an unseen Imperial cruiser likely circling this planet somewhere overhead and every chance Anakin would com for help if Padme failed in her horrific plan, the rational choice would have been to leave, and leave quickly.
But Obi-Wan's mind had retreated to leave only his heart shouting the truth of what Obi-Wan had seen and felt in their last confrontation as he raced back to the cave.
There is still hope. There is still good in him. I have to try to save him.
No matter what he's done, I have to try to save him.
He slowed, panting, as he approached the rough homestead of Padme and her children, the dimmest glow coming from inside the cave mouth outlining it in flickers of orange. The Force told him of loss here, a deep and unseen rift across his senses before he saw with his own eyes the silhouetted bodies of Padme's last two handmaidens collapsed at the foot of the entrance. Obi-Wan avoided looking at them as he approached and stepped over them to go in, forcing himself to move ahead without stopping.
The fear that had kept pace with him all the way here told him there was no need to pause and study the gruesome tableau of the women and their blasters, because once he saw what likely awaited him inside there would be enough horror and anguish to last the rest of his life.
No one was in the first room, only the faint sound of waves from the beach and the flicker of candles scattered about the large space, but the finality of the grave stole over him as intimately as a lover as he entered, whispering that it owned this place now, that it would own it forever.
Obi-Wan wanted to turn and run, the same heart that had brought him here now fragile and terrified of what it would find. Taking a shaky breath, he moved deeper inside, to the second room two young children had spent their short lives playing and sleeping in.
His heart stopped, freezing him in the doorway.
Death hung heavy in the air here, a proud beast showing off its spoils, the shadows of the room its sable-draped arms spread wide over the two bodies sprawled out among the pillows.
Padme, her dark hair mercifully across her face as she lay on her side.
And Anakin, on his back, eyes closed and tears still wet on his face.
The Jedi had seen the dead up close since he was a padawan: his master, his enemies, his friends, innocent bystanders caught up in the horror of the Clone Wars. There had been so many over the years, such a long line of gore and blood and violence, but deep inside his soul the master had never truly dealt with the idea that one day his own padawan's face would be at the end of that line. It had been hard enough to place Padme's there, back in those first painful months after he had fled civilization.
"No!" Obi-Wan howled, rushing over to drop between them, clutching at Padme's arm with one hand and Anakin's chest with the other. "No!" The cry threw itself against the rough stone walls and back again, violent and loud, but the quiet of the two he held remained unbroken.
They were still warm, the cruelest part of all of it. If I had only gotten here faster…
A sob breaking free, he crumpled forward, sending the Force rushing through him into them, searching blindly and desperately for something other than that hideous silence, something he could grab ahold of and try to heal. Anything.
The midnight sea of Padme's mind remained flat and still, the first of the two to answer his cry because it was so painfully clear. She was gone. Padme would never rise and never speak again, a fragile form sleeping forever on a planet so far away from home.
He let go of her, tears flooding his vision as another face was added to the grim line of loss, and slid his other hand to Anakin's chest, focusing his agony on him. The man lay motionless beneath him, swathed in the black folds of Vader's robes but the tears on his cheeks taunting Obi-Wan with the fact Anakin had been here too.
"You don't get to do this, you son of a bitch!" Obi-Wan hissed through his sobs, fingers twisting in the heavy cloak draped across Anakin's chest as he bent over him. He felt the emptiness, the all-consuming dark that spread out like ink around Anakin and enticed Obi-Wan to throw himself into it and follow his former padawan into oblivion.
No! NO!
He circled the edge of it with his mind, panicked, his breath catching in his throat as the Force glimmered. In the middle of the ink drowning Anakin floated the faintest spark, the last star left in a cold, empty night and fading even as Obi-Wan realized it was there.
Anakin! he shouted without words, his soul crying out to the other one slipping away. Fight it, Anakin!
Did the star grow brighter?
Anakin, please!
A thread of the Force, as frail as the light Obi-Wan clung to, touched his frantic mind. I have to die for what I've done.
Gasping in surprise, the older man reached out to cradle Anakin's face in his hands, sending a dangerously powerful jolt of healing through the younger one as he drew as much of the Force into himself as he could. It was like trying to direct an avalanche with his hands, his will strong and raw, laced with anger and fear. Not today, Anakin.
I hurt Padme.
Obi-Wan guided the jagged threads of the Force as best he could, the unfiltered Light searing the edges of his mind, and fought unconsciousness as he leaned over to touch his forehead to Anakin's. And you will hurt your children if you do this! An outsider watching would only have seen one man mourning the loss of another, a brother or lover, perhaps, given the intensity of his torment.
Children? came the puzzled, half-formed thought.
Luke! Leia!
Anakin's consciousness shivered as he remembered them, as he remembered anything beyond Padme, but the last of his strength was almost gone. Luke and Leia… I can't leave them!
Anakin, you have to hold on! Please! The Force cascaded through Obi-Wan as he strained to open his mind and soul to it even more, its power vast and heavy as it fell to pound through him like a waterfall crashing down from a great height. He felt like the bones would rattle out of his body if he didn't go insane first. Fight!
The dim point of the star was almost out now, black pressing in all around it. I… don't know… if I can...
FIGHT, DAMN YOU!
The light flickered, and then flared to life as the Force surged up from the man below, Anakin's beleaguered mind surfacing to clutch for purchase like a drowning man given one last chance at rescue.
Obi-Wan's spirit did not hesitate to reach down and catch him, healing as it went and dragging Anakin's soul back from the vicious, hungry night that had almost eaten him whole. The Force careened wildly around them as the Jedi instinctively fought to repair the worst damage the poison had done to Anakin's body and the Sith fought to embrace the life he had almost lost. Dazzling and white, the wild power of the two clashed as they did so, Anakin and Obi-Wan's thoughts and emotions swirling together in a chaotic storm so intense neither could tell exactly which were their own and which had come crashing in blindly from the other.
don't do this you can't do this i don't want to lose you i hate you how could you do that to me i love you i hate you i missed you love you missed you missed you
Obi-Wan let out a deep, shuddering sigh as he dragged the last of Anakin back into the realm of the living, sitting up to clutch at his head as Anakin drew a sharp and sudden breath, a loud rasp that echoed in the hush of the cave. Rolling over onto his hands and knees, away from Obi-Wan and the unmoving shadow of his wife's body, he choked and coughed, black bile splattering across the floor under him.
Trying to steady himself against the cushions, Obi-Wan reached out a trembling hand and caught Anakin's shoulder, attempting to give him a little more healing to help him through the painful process of his body expelling the poison. "Anakin…"
As the coughing fit subsided, the boy who had grown into a monster looked up at him with the pained determination to live Obi-Wan hadn't seen since he had been grievously wounded during a long-ago battle in the Clone Wars. "Help… me… Obi-Wan..."
Obi-Wan stared down into the yellow eyes of his hunter and heard the voice of his dearest friend, the two realities unable to coexist in his mind. The loud storm of their renewed Force bond still lingering in his mind, the Jedi tried to clear his exhausted mind and focus on which of the raging emotions inside him was paramount. There was anger. So much anger, but also the smallest hope Anakin could be saved. Fear circled too, the fear of what might happen if he trusted his Padawan again. And finally there was love. That was the hardest to admit, but it was there.
It was the hardest to admit because, despite everything that had happened and the unyielding hatred logic demanded as a result, Obi-Wan knew love was the strongest emotion he felt for Anakin. Gazing down at the pathetic figure hunched over before him, he realized that, for better or for worse, his heart burned with the same fierce protectiveness for this man that it did for his children.
"... don't leave me… please..." the padawan begged.
"I won't," the master said.
The younger man stared up into Obi-Wan's face, dazed and afraid: the Jedi was unsure if he'd even heard him. And then the strange, disconcerting eyes closed as Anakin passed out, slumping onto his side against Obi-Wan's legs. He would live, the Force told Obi-Wan, but he had spent much to do so.
Obi-Wan buried his head in his hands and cried, letting his emotions run as bright and dark as they wanted for several minutes before wrestling them into a facsimile of control. Anakin needed him. Luke and Leia needed him.
The ocean continued its eternal rhythm outside and the candles danced shadows on the wall as the older man calmed himself with slow, steady breathing and finally dried his tears with the sleeve of his tunic, composed once again if not calm. As he did, a soft vibration buzzed from Anakin's arm, the low hum of a com.
Obi-Wan glared at it as if it were a hideous insect, knowing from the old days - when I commanded a ship, when the clones were my brothers, when all of this was so different - what this was.
A check-in from the ship in orbit. When he doesn't answer they'll send a scouting party. Depending on their orbit pattern and troop complement we'll have twenty or thirty minutes before they get here.
Obi-Wan took the wreck of his emotions and did his best to neatly box it up and set it aside, a chill ghosting through him as the com buzzed again. He ran his hands through the roughness of his beard and furiously tried to think, possibilities rising and falling in split-second arcs as he sank back into old habits finely honed by years of war. Wake him up to answer? No. He won't be coherent even if I can get him awake. Carry him back? No, there is no way I can carry him back all that way. Stay? No. Alone I can't take on a scouting party that will be expecting hostiles.
Let them take him back?
No.
Frustrated, he took a deep breath and tried to center himself inside a still ring of calm, one that had once been so easy to find it was almost second-nature. Look. Don't think. Just look. He took in the warmth of Anakin lying next to him, the light scent of salt from the sea outside, and the rough weave of the rug beneath him.
Standing, Obi-Wan tried to move past those impressions to take in all of his surroundings, subconsciously avoiding the shape of Padme just past Anakin, focusing instead on the simple cups tilted out on the floor before moving through the other roughly-hewn rooms lit by meager candlelight.
They had lived simply, he thought without allowing himself to focus too much on all of the people that "they" encompassed. Sleeping quarters, a bare-bones refresher, and what was probably a kitchen, with tall stacks of boxed supplies along the far wall. Those caught his eye just as he was about to lean back out of the room, and he remained, studying them from the doorway.
They wouldn't have trusted any traders enough to invite them here. So they had to have gone out to buy them and then brought them here themselves from the ship Luke and Leia are in right now.
That means there's a speeder of some kind either here or back in the hangar. Anakin's com sounded again from back where he lay, a low warning hum. They're still trying to get in touch with him. We don't have much time.
Please let that speeder be here.
Precious minutes burned away as Obi-Wan searched the smaller caves that the main rooms led off into and then rushed outside, almost tripping over the bodies strewn in front of the door, to see if there were any overhangs or rocks further down the beach a speeder could be hidden in.
When he rounded the corner of one rough collection of boulders within sight of the cave, relief came in a swift, bone-deep wave. The dim fireflies of metal plates glinting in starlight showed the outline of a home speeder, a beast-of-burden utility model used for hauling and other simple projects. It was neither beautiful nor new, but as Obi-Wan started it up and swung it around to float back down the sand toward the cave, he didn't care at all. Now we have a chance.
Anakin's com was hissing again in a new pattern when Obi-Wan came back, the dull, dead tone of stupid electronics demanding an answer, and he ignored it as he lifted and then slung Anakin over his shoulders with a grunt of effort. I need to get rid of that, but not here. I don't want to lead them straight to her.
Obi-Wan gave one last, sorrowful nod to the woman now alone, her body facing away from them, which made it seem she was merely asleep in the orange glow of the candles. I am sorry I failed you, Padme. I swear I will protect Luke and Leia to my dying breath. The idea of setting fire to the place, of leaving nothing behind to be found in the case of a search operation, had occurred to him as he'd frantically hunted for the speeder, but there was no time. By Obi-Wan's calculations they had at best another fifteen or so minutes before the scouting party would arrive.
With a last, unspoken farewell to Padme, Obi-Wan set out, carefully working his way through the doorways with his ungainly burden until they were out on the sand where he'd parked the speeder. He clumsily slipped the younger man down to lie across the wide flat back of the vehicle where boxes or parts usually went, his body landing with a thud and rocking the speeder a little.
Anakin stirred, mumbling something incoherent, but Obi-Wan had no time to listen and threw himself into the pilot's seat, gearing the thrusters up and setting off down the beach.
The night was silent, only the sound of the waves and the motor, and Obi-Wan kept watch in the night sky for the telltale comet of a drop ship. None had appeared yet, and he risked pulling the speeder over when they were almost back to the hangar, nothing but beach stretching either way.
Anakin was struggling to wake up, half-formed words slipping free as Obi-Wan dragged him upright and shifted his legs to hang over the side of the levitating speeder.
His whole body limp, he had no choice but to lean against Obi-Wan as the Jedi began methodically stripping off Anakin's boots. Beyond the standard-issue com itself, the Republic had often required its Jedi to hide away another tracking device somewhere in their robes and the former General Kenobi was sure the Empire would have kept that little rule in place for its glorious poster boy.
The boots tumbled down into the sand, the left glove and then right one following, Obi-Wan having no time to show deference to the bare, harsh reality of Anakin's cybernetic hand. He'd seen it so little of it during their years together, Anakin always keeping it covered, that of all the surrealness of this moment, it stood out the most. He tried to put the cold metal out of his mind as he dropped the hand back into Anakin's lap.
The cloak came next, large enough it took a small fight to pry it away, and then Obi-Wan tugged off Anakin's belt. It and his Imperial saber slid away to clunk down in an ungainly pile on the beach, and Obi-Wan glared at the metal hilt as it went. Hideous thing.
Anakin was trying to speak, his mouth warm and close to Obi-Wan's ear as the Jedi stood shouldered against the weak bulk of his body, but Obi-Wan shook his head and whispered to Anakin to be quiet as he stripped away the sleek leather guards and tabards the Imperial designers had made for the great and terrible Lord Vader.
Reaching back to grab at Anakin's outer tunic, Obi-Wan jerked his hand away as if the soft linen had bit him. What was that? Something very wrong, something that defied his understanding of the world, was lurking there under the layered collars, shaped like a stone but bleeding energy that tasted like poison around the edges. It frightened him.
I need to get rid of this thing, whatever it is.
Steeling himself much in the same way he did before battles, Obi-Wan thrust his hand inside the shirt and grabbed the source of his sharp unease from an inner pocket. The time it took him to yank his fist back out and then throw it hard to the ground was only a second, but in his mind a long, bizarre minute passed as he watched his body move in slow motion.
Find, a raspy voice said, slithering through him and halting only at the edge of the Light that surrounded Obi-Wan. Who do you want to find?
The answer came before he could stop himself, the line to his subconscious much shorter here than outside in the physical world. Ahsoka Tano. She could help us. He regretted it as soon as he said it, casting out his mind to recall the words before the thing waiting in the dark could hear them, but it was too late.
At the same time, he realized Anakin was somehow next to him here in this strange, incorporeal world that existed between moments, and that the unseen creature feared him.
Find her, Anakin demanded, his spirit's voice much weaker than usual in his current state but still frighteningly compelling. Obi-Wan cringed at the flicker of power that grew from his former Padawan's words, unfurling like ash and smoke from a fire.
Find her. Find Ahsoka Tano, it repeated. Obi-Wan felt the stars above the beach shifting around him, like a child spinning a hologlobe with the surface view turned on, the entire sky above grinding around in a slow whirl of black and veins of dim white.
It drifted back into its proper place, all the stars back where they should be, in the time it took Obi-Wan to draw back his arm out in the real world and throw. One word came crawling out to the shades of Obi-Wan and Anakin as the talisman broke contact with Obi-Wan's hand and shot down to bounce across the folds of the discarded cloak. Rusata.
Time returned to its normal pace with a lack of ceremony: Anakin lost consciousness again, slumping heavily against Obi-Wan, and the Jedi planted his boot more firmly in the sand to keep them both upright, the name taunting him. The Rusata star cluster? She's there? How would that thing know that?
He understood on a deep, instinctual level how it knew, his Force training filling in the unpleasant blanks to a certain extent, but there was no time to consider it further now. It was gone, and he was glad for it.
Furiously pulling Anakin's tunics off and tossing them aside, Obi-Wan cursed as he heard the faint, low drone of a ship entering the atmosphere above them somewhere in the night. He pushed Anakin back as gently as he could to lay him down and slung Anakin's legs back up on the speeder, the younger man barefoot and shirtless and far less intimidating than he had been. They flew off in a rumble down the beach, leaving the undignified pile of fabric and leather behind on the damp sand.
It was another harrowing few minutes of wind and noise back to the hangar, Anakin soon draped over his shoulders once again and hauled up to the open doors of the ship, the children already alerted by the Force to their approach and waiting for them.
Leia stood there, Luke behind her, her hand on the door control as she watched Obi-Wan pound up the ramp inside. "Close the door, Leia!" he said as he jogged by, kneeling to drop Anakin down into one of the empty chairs.
"Get to your seats! Did the ship finish start-up?" he asked them, snapping buckles into place across Anakin's bare waist and chest, the heavy lines of straps covering up the fainter ones of scars that traced all along him. Anakin didn't stir, whatever black arts that unnatural stone had required no doubt taking the last of his reserves.
"It all turned green," Luke offered.
"Good. That's good," Obi-Wan said, nodding reassuringly to Luke as the little boy fussed with his belts. "Here, let me help you."
Over the clicks of the buckles, Luke whispered with wide eyes, "Is Papa alive?"
"Of course he is," Leia interrupted, rushing to her own seat and flopping into it with the force only the very young can manage. "Can't you feel him?"
"Yes, he is. And he needs our help. But first we have to get out of here," Obi-Wan said in his best soothing voice as he made sure she was buckled in properly as well. "Don't try to go into his mind, Luke. Not right now. Please."
Luke nodded, never looking away from the man strapped in just a few feet from him. There was a little fear, but mostly open fascination, and the Jedi wondered in the back of his mind if this was the first time he'd seen not only his father, but any man other than Obi-Wan in real life.
Hurrying back and sitting with a thump in the main pilot's chair, Obi-Wan hit the switches to draw up the ramp outside and initiate the auto-launch mode, which rattled the ship as the engines spun up higher and lifted them from the rocky hangar floor.
The vessel turned slowly, carefully, a large and clumsy insect searching for a way out into the night, and then they were outside, gliding up and out across the ocean, away from the shore that had been all the two children on the ship had ever known.
Tense, knowing nothing was ever a given in life, Obi-Wan glanced back at Anakin's unconscious form and then Luke and Leia, who were both staring in delight at the tiny, moonlit waves below as the ship banked and settled into its flight path. Giving them an encouraging smile before turning back, the expression dropping back into one of deep concentration, Obi-Wan confirmed the numbers in front of him and boosted the thrusters, everyone sinking back into their seats as the engines sent them screaming upward into the sky.
Sensors were minimal in transport ships, but even they were programmed to sense other ships to avoid collisions in mid-orbit. As they sped higher over the sea, the roar of the engines the beautiful sound of escape, the Imperial ship blinked into sensor view on the other side of the planet, a burning red dot Obi-Wan thanked the Force was so far away it had no way of catching up with them before they hit hyperspace.
Searching, fingers flying over the keys as the ocean and then the atmosphere fell away to reveal the jet-black crispness of space and stars, he selected the default node for the Rusata cluster and slapped the command key with his palm.
Everything fell away into a beautiful stream of blue and white.