A/N: This is the penultimate chapter. I am so nervous about this! Hope you guys don't hate it :)
The corners of the General's bedchamber were shrouded in darkness; the room illuminated solely by the crimson light of the saber blade that speared a deadly line between the two men at its centre.
Obi-Wan's eyes focused on the red blade hanging above him, waiting for the final downward stroke that would send him into dark oblivion.
He waited.
And he waited.
Then the weight of the boot compressing his chest receded, just slightly.
"Anakin?" Obi-Wan heard his own voice, breathless and wavering over the three syllables. For once the Force was blank, unreadable.
Slowly, Obi-Wan's gaze moved along the blade, to Anakin's face. And suddenly he found himself experiencing the tiniest tremor of...
Hope?
The crimson light reflected from the tear that trickled slowly down Anakin's cheek.
Obi-Wan watched as the droplet of water fell into the air above his face.
Then the tear, and everything else, disappeared.
Obi-Wan felt the impact of a single drop of water on his lips.
Silence for one breath.
Two.
Three.
Them, in the darkness, Anakin spoke.
"No. I will not kill you."
Then there was a clatter as the deactivated hilt of a lightsaber fell to the floor.
Air rushed into Obi-Wan's lungs as the pressure on his chest disappeared.
"A- Anakin?"
"Enough. This ends now."
As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, Obi-Wan lay motionless, momentarily stunned. He knew this must mean the light within Anakin had won. This meant Anakin was a threat, and had to die…
And yet Obi-Wan found ideas and questions and plans and hopes clashing together, sending his mind into a jumbled mess. The chaotic whirl of his thoughts was interrupted by the sharp wailing of a siren.
"All passengers proceed to your designated escape point. Thirteen minutes remaining. Repeat. Thirteen minutes remaining." The siren sounded again. Three minutes to clear the ship.
When the siren eventually stopped, only one thought was left resonating in Obi-Wan's mind.
The two of them. A team. The team…
And then time caught up on him and propelled him upwards with a sudden urgency, because if both of them were to survive, they needed to get off this ship, and quickly. The next second Obi-Wan was on his feet, his discarded saber hilt forgotten in haste.
"We must leave immediately," he said, feeling a ridiculous urge to flash a grin towards the young man who now stood a few feet away. But as Obi-Wan glanced up he noticed Padmé's motionless body lying at Anakin's feet. Obi-Wan could feel the last thin tendrils of her life force; Anakin would be able to feel it too. She would be dead before the ship was destroyed. Obi-Wan's exuberance was suddenly shot through by uncertainty. "Come, Anakin. Leave her."
Anakin looked up and smiled. "Yes Master."
Obi-Wan was hit by a strange, confusing and wonderful torrent of emotions when he heard those two simple words. Turning, he strode purposefully towards the door, ignoring the small flurries of doubt that grew even as his self-possession began to return, living in this moment, here and now. Living, really living. "There is an escape shuttle one level down," he said, without looking back. "It's reserved for visiting civilians so the clones will not have used it. Let's go."
Obi-Wan's swift steps took him from the room, and a glance to his left reassured him Anakin had followed.
Except it did not reassure him.
Because Anakin was not by his side.
Then there was an almighty shuddering in the Force, and before Obi-Wan could react, the thick blast-proof door of the General's quarters had slid shut with a force so great that the surrounding metal warped with the impact.
Wheeling around, Obi-Wan raised a hand to the door control but it sparked and ignited under his fingertips. Cursing in frustration, he ran back to the door, peering through the thick glass of the circular window in the centre. "Anakin!"
It was with a sense of horror and disbelief that he saw the young man stood in exactly the same position as a moment ago, gazing down at the figure of his wife.
Obi-Wan pounded on the door. "Anakin! What are you doing? We have less than three minutes to clear the ship!"
Anakin ignored him.
Obi-Wan looked around frantically, eventually spotted the intercom button and slammed his hand down on it.
"Anakin! We need to leave!"
The young man looked up, his gaze a strange mixture of sorrow and resolution. "No. I told you. This ends now."
"You want to die here? Stay here and you will be forgotten, lost, you will have given your life for nothing! Do you want to help me rid corruption and dissent from the Republic, and see the birth of an Empire in which peace will reign for a thousand years? Or do you want to be remembered as the coward who murdered his wife, then abandoned his duty when he was needed most?"
"No," Anakin replied, holding his gaze steadily, although the Force swirled with emotion. "I wish to be remembered truthfully, as one who loved too much, but loved unwisely."
"Foolish boy! You must forget her now! The galaxy needs you. I need you!"
Anakin laughed through tears. "I loved you, Obi-Wan. You were my brother. My father. My closest friend…"
"Then come with me now! Join me. It is your destiny! We are the same, you and I, I can teach you to-"
"No! You may have torn out my heart, but I am nothing like you, Obi-Wan. I don't even understand what you are. I only wish I'd had the strength to kill you when I had the chance. Now leave - do what you have to do, or stay, and die. I don't care. My place is here, with my wife."
Obi-Wan watched, aghast, as Anakin turned away and fell to his knees by Padmé's side. Lifting her hand to his lips he kissed it gently. Then, slowly, he crawled over her, pulling her limp body into his arms.
"Anakin!" Obi-Wan cried out, reaching to his belt for his saber. It would take a few minutes, but he should be able to cut through the door. He'd drag Anakin out if he had to...
But his fingers found only empty space.
His saber was still inside the room, with Anakin.
"Anakin!" He cried out again, banging on the door with his fists, voice breaking down to a sob over the single word. "Listen to me! Ana-"
With a raise of Anakin's hand, the intercom crackled, and went dead.
Obi-Wan swooned, slumping against the door, fingers clawing at it as he slid to the floor. Suddenly, in that darkened corridor, it was as if the entire galaxy was collapsing around him. His strength just crumbled away. And there he was left, alone and vulnerable. Immediately, vicious memories that had been carefully suppressed by years of effort flooded back into his consciousness, each one as raw and painful as if it had occurred just yesterday.
A long time ago, a Padawan had suffered as no one should ever suffer. He had experienced some of the greatest pain imaginable. He had flung himself, headlong,into the darkness. Only the dark side of the Force could subdue his pain, to make it a vague shadow of a memory, as if it had been experienced by someone else.
Now he felt it again, a thousand times over, and he heard his own voice screaming, as he had screamed then.
Time melted into incoherence as Obi-Wan lay outside the door, stricken and blind, confused and out of control. He had lost everything, everything was gone, everything he had never even admitted to himself that he needed. Now, far too late, he saw the truth.
The truth, that his one remaining fear was to be alone.
To continue, to live, alone.
Nothing mattered. Obi-Wan just wanted death, and finality, and the endless, terrible pain to stop. Now.
Deep in the bowels of the Imperator's power core, the seconds ticked relentlessly onwards, and the trickle of subatomic particles dancing within it grew steadily, irrepressibly, towards a cascade.
A cascade that would become a torrent.
A torrent that would become an ignition.
An ignition that would release enough energy to reduce the ship to nothing but a massless cloud of shimmering light and heat.
The pulsing green glow of the reactor started to turn yellow, and then a dangerous white.
Lost.
Obi-Wan was lost, stumbling blindly within the fever of his own breakdown. Eyes tightly closed, he had retreated inwards, the only sense of his own body coming from the coolness of the corridor floor against his cheek.
Even though he had never allowed himself the admission, buried deep within the hidden reaches of Obi-Wan's heart had been a connection to himself. To the real Obi-Wan Kenobi. To the man he had been, before Qui-Gon had taken away his innocence, his honesty, his dignity and his freedom, and replaced them with pure hate.
Anakin had been there, on Naboo. They had met just before Obi-Wan had taken the final, desperate measure that would bind him to the Sith forever. The step that would trade damnation for immunity. Darkness for oblivescence. But Obi-Wan had not managed to let go of the past completely, because Anakin had been his connection to it, ever since.
Somehow, Anakin was the connection to a time when he lived without nightmares. To a distant time, a time of innocence, and laughter and dreams. Of a Padawan who was virtuous, and honest, and far too eager to please.
Tightly buried inside Obi-Wan was a grain of that man. There had never been any question of redemption, of course - of some fanciful ascension from the dark side to the light. Obi-Wan had hated too much, and hurt too much, and resented and loathed the Jedi Order to have any desire or need to return.
But Anakin…
Anakin would have made the darkness bearable. Anakin would have shared his nightmares. Anakin would have helped him understand his pain.
That small grain of a man wished he had the strength to rip down the door that now separated them, so he could crawl to his friend and die at his side.
But he could not. With the impact of metal on metal, Anakin had taken his last hope away.
Within Obi-Wan, that grain of goodness glowed brightly and fizzled for a moment.
Then the light burnt out, and it was gone.
Steadily and silently, the Republic ship Imperator glided on its course, intermittently shedding transport shuttles into the blackness of deep space. On the bridge, Clone Commander Cody watched the bank of control screens before him with a frown. His task was complete: all surviving crew and passengers had been evacuated. With a grimace Cody pushed the sequence of buttons that would write the datafiles from the control system memory onto the datacard he had just slipped into the socket on the console. It was actually the commanding officer's duty to copy a ship's records in the event of its abandonment. But Cody had not heard from General Kenobi for many minutes, and now Obi-Wan was not responding to his commlink.
When the transfer was complete, the clone pocketed the card, and signalled to his wingman to accompany him. Wherever Obi-Wan might be, it was now their turn to leave. There was no hesitation: it was not a clone's duty to question, or worry about the actions or motives of their superiors. A few minutes later the two clones boarded a shuttle and, with their usually relaxed efficiency, assumed their positions in the pilots' seats and initiated the launch sequence.
As the surface of the command ship started to fall way beneath them, Cody fingered his commlink uncertainly. No, it was not his duty to be concerned… and yet it was very unlike Obi-Wan to be silent at a moment like this. Usually the General was in touch with him every few minutes, wanting information, issuing orders...
Something was definitely wrong.
Eventually, Obi-Wan became aware that somewhere, distantly, the Force was whispering to him. He groaned, pressing his eyes more tightly shut, ignoring it.
But the whisper gradually grew louder, and louder.
It shouted to him, then it screamed to him.
Finally, he had to listen.
"General Kenobi! Sir, can you hear me?"
It was not the Force. It was Cody.
Then he heard the siren sound again. "All passengers proceed to your designated escape point. Eleven minutes remaining. Repeat. Eleven minutes remaining."
And then the Force spoke to him, insistently. Fool. Weak, pathetic fool. Move. Get up. Now.
Slowly, Obi-Wan opened his eyes.
Obi-Wan was still numb, immovable, frozen. Weak. Impossibly weak. He felt half-dead already.
"General Kenobi. Please respond. This is cee-cee treble-two-four."
A General. Not his Padawan now. Not this time. You have not struggled and fought and hated for so long to let weakness stop you…
Obi-Wan shook his head, eyes still wet with tears, head still spinning with despair.
You still have everything to lose, and everything to gain.
It was not only the Force speaking, but himself. It was the part of him that had survived countless horrors at the hands of his own Master, and had not given up. That part of him had sought his vengeance, and taken it with brutal force. It was the part of him that was pledged, forever to the Sith.
It was all of him.
Obi-Wan's hand reached to his belt. "Y-yes Cody?"
"Are you alright Sir?"
"Yes-fine." Still lying on the floor, Obi-Wan pressed his eyes tightly shut, trying to focus his swirling mind. "Is the evacuation complete?"
"Yes sir."
"G-good. I… Request retrieval from the nearest arm of the fleet."
"Already done sir."
"Right."
Silence. Obi-Wan rubbed his forehead, his arm feeling like lead.
The commlink buzzed again. "Sir?"
"Yes?"
"Are you set to rendezvous?"
"I… yes." Obi-Wan replied. "Await my order. Kenobi out."
With a shaking hand he shut off the commlink. Then, fighting dizziness and disorientation, he managed to sit up. He still felt incredibly weak, empty and fragile. But it was not the first time he had felt that way. So, wearily, and blindly, Obi-Wan gathered the comforting shrouds of evil around his heart once again. Then he stumbled to his feet, and he let the dark side seep back into his soul.
Slowly, the black energy penetrated his body.
Obi-Wan breathed it in and tasted it and felt it in his veins - that familiar, comfortable, unstoppable force, that had answered his prayers, stopped his nightmares and soothed his pain.
Then he remembered Anakin's words.
This ends now.
As Obi-Wan stood there in the darkness, held up only by the evil power that had eaten away his humanity, he looked within himself and found…
Nothing.
So Anakin had been right. It had been the end.
On that cold durasteel floor Obi-Wan had finally let go of Anakin Skywalker.
And he had let go of the man he himself had once been.
The darkness had taken away his pain again, leaving only the desire to inflict that pain on others.
Now, that seemed like a small price to pay.
Now, in the darkness, a Sith Lord smiled, and it was the cold-blooded smile of an Emperor set to teach his subjects the meaning of the word terror.
Obi-Wan savoured the word for only a moment, before the Force whispered its warning: less than a minute to escape the ship.
The, without looking back, he turned in the direction of the escape shuttle, and ran.
Dormé's hands tightened around the worn steering control of her starship as it lurched dangerously close to the side wall of the Imperator's central void.
Easy does it… come on… she muttered under her breath, fingers beginning to ache with tension. She leaned down to peer upwards out of window towards her destination, finally spotting the dark rectangle several levels above. Focusing there, she squinted, expecting any moment to see a flicker of red light.
But there was nothing.
Outside, she could hear the distant whining of the Imperator's warning sirens. Given her state of mind it was probably fortunate she couldn't hear the automated voice that would tell her how many minutes were left before the entire ship was blown into oblivion.
Dormé frowned, feeling the perspiration beading on her forehead and starting to trickle down her temple. Three levels to go, and she was almost certainly running out of time. With a final surge of impatience, she pushed her foot down hard on the throttle, jolting the ship rapidly upwards. Then, as gently as she could, she nudged the steering control sideways, holding it steady with one hand whilst reaching out to flick a switch above her head with the other.
With a loud bang and a scrape of metal, the ship lunged sideways, straight into the wall she had spent the last ten minutes trying her hardest to avoid.
Dormé winced. So bang went her chance of arriving discreetly. But she hadn't seriously expected to surprise anyone. She was acting in desperation. Just attempting to fly a ship like this up inside the relatively small chamber at the centre of the ship was reckless, never mind what she was intending to do next. Attempting to leap though a broken window into the midst of a battle between two of the strongest Jedi the galaxy had ever known was virtual insanity. But then the nature and likelihood of success hadn't really entered into her reasoning.
Flicking on two more switches, one to return control of the ship to the onboard computer and one to instruct it to hold its current position, Dormé wiped a sweating hand on the side of her tunic, unhooked her blaster from her belt, and ran to the exit.
Cold air blasted her face as the hatch slid open. Dormé waited apprehensively. How many people would she see at the other side? Ideally two. The right two. At worst, three.
In the gloom, she could not make out anyone.
Dormé held her breath, and jumped.
She stumbled as she landed on the floor of the General's bedchamber, twisting and landing awkwardly on her side.
She expected any moment to hear the thrum of a lightsaber ignition, to see a red blade blister into life. But there was nothing.
Silence.
Darkness.
Then she felt something soft against her foot.
As her eyes adapted to the low lighting she made out two figures, lying together at her feet.
Fear mixed with dread, followed not long after by recognition, and then relief.
"Anakin!" She got to her feet awkwardly and stumbled forward to shake his shoulder. "Anakin!"
"Hmm…" Anakin stirred from his position, long limbs curled around Padmé's body, his face buried in her hair.
"Anakin, we must leave right now!"
"No. Master," he mumbled. "I told you. It's all over…"
"Anakin it's me! Dormé! Come on! We can still save Padmé, and ourselves!"
She fumbled for his hand, finding it cold and tightly clenching the fabric of Padmé's dress.
"Anakin!"
"D… Dormé?" Anakin lifted his head.
"Yes! Now get up! My ship…" she waved a hand to the window. "I need your help to lift her. She's still alive, isn't she?"
Anakin nodded silently, still looking a little bewildered.
"Good! Now come on! Quickly!"
The siren sounded again. "All passengers proceed to your designated escape point. Ten minutes remaining. Repeat. Ten minutes remaining."
Time had run out.
It took them less than twenty seconds to get Padmé back on to the ship, but to Dormé it felt like twenty minutes. As soon as the senator was laid out and safely secured on to the small fold-down medical stretcher, Dormé pushed Anakin through the door into the cockpit and down into the pilot's seat.
"We need to get out of here, and there's only one way," she said, dashing back and swiftly but carefully placing an oxygen mask to Padmé's face before sliding an emergency support drip into the back of the senator's tiny wrist and taping it securely in place.
As she stepped back into the cockpit it was to see, with great relief, that the fingers of Anakin's single remaining hand were travelling with lightning speed over switches and buttons. It would seem his instincts as a pilot had kicked in, and were for the moment overriding his confusion.
"Strap yourself in," he said through gritted teeth, flexing his fingers over the control as she sat down heavily in the co-pilot's seat.
The second her buckle clicked in place, Anakin pulled back on the controls and off they went.
Down.
Dormé's knuckles were white as she gripped the arms of the co-pilot's chair. Not from the motion – once the ship had dropped and rotated it only took a few seconds to reach maximum acceleration and the resulting force merely pushed her more firmly into the seat back behind her. No, it was not anything physical but rather anxiety that caused a sudden tension in both her fingers and the rest of her body.
Suddenly, she entertained the possibility that they might actually survive. Anakin was flying the ship to within an inch of its life, his ability as a pilot were well renowned, and if anyone could fly them past the reactor chamber and into open space it would be him…
But would they get clear in time? Tens of levels flashed by, the seemingly minisucle opening ahead growing larger with every second. How long did they have left? It was certainly less than the ten minutes Obi-Wan had spoken of…
The inscription on her lower back suddenly flared, making her cry out in pain.
Obi-Wan...
She had thought… assumed…
Fighting against the vibrations of the ship, Dormé turned her head towards Anakin.
"He's still alive?"
Beside her Anakin grimaced, but did not reply.
The next second they shot past the sweltering white heat of the reactor chamber, and into the cold stillness of space.
Obi-Wan stood at the viewing window of the escape shuttle, brow furrowed in thought as he watched the triangular form of the Republic's flagship shrink steadily into the distance.
Behind him there was a sudden rustle of clothing. Taken off guard, he wheeled around, saber blade spearing crimson light into the grey room.
Harmoniously reflecting the light of his weapon, red-painted lips curved into a smile, a white hand tossing a matching red ringlet over her shoulder.
He'd forgotten about her.
And him.
"Abandoned your lover-boy?" Obi-Wan's question was accompanied by raised eyebrow.
"Bail died before we even reached the ship," the girl replied steadily, holding his gaze, pretty eyes conveying only the sliver of sorrow he sensed in her.
How old was she – eighteen? Nineteen? Yet he could feel it - her heart was nearly as black as his own. And she was clearly… willing. Obi-Wan chuckled. She would be a welcome distraction, when he had time for such indulgence.
Obi-Wan's expression grew serious as he turned back to the window, eyes flicking down to a display of blood-red digits on the panel at his side. Ten seconds. Then he lifted his eyes up to focuse towards the distant ship, reaching out into the Force, searching for something he knew he would find there.
He found them. Both of them. Two Force signatures, each distinctive, both uniquely imprinted with the dark side of the Force, both tainted and tangled in the dark web of the Sith.
Obi-Wan had no personal desire to feel them, anymore, either of them. As the shuttle had separated from the Imperator's hull he had finally separated himself from every last shred of the weakness and humanity that had persisted in cursing his soul. He barely remembered what had happened in that bedchamber, or in the corridor outside.
Such was the power of the dark side.
Now he merely needed to witness those two flames being extinguished, once and for all.
Obi-Wan reached out a gloved hand to press against the glass as the red digits of the display counted down.
Two seconds.
One.
Pause.
Silence.
Nothing.
Then with a blinding flash, the ship became the centre of an expanding sphere of pure white light. Instantly, Obi-Wan's grip on the two Force signatures was yanked from his reach, the whole shuttle shuddering and groaning with an invisible shock wave.
Cursing and rocking on his feet, Obi-Wan closed his eyes, pressing his hand harder to the glass and reaching out into the Force.
Nothing. They were gone. Dead.
When Obi-Wan opened his eyes again, he saw only the calm blackness of space, a smattering of stars and a faint sparkling cloud of fine debris.
From behind him came a light, feminine laugh.
"So, my Lord. Looks like it's just you and me."