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Chapter 10

Obi-Wan crashed into sharp chunks of ferrocrete debris. Several hands grabbed him and hauled him backwards, and he blinked several times. White and red flashed before his eyes and alarms screamed from every direction. Familiar voices talked at him, but he had no idea to whom they belonged or what was said. He stared at the metal door of the tower—one of dozens—as it slammed shut behind him.

Sealing Anakin inside.

"Let me go," Obi-Wan said, pulling back against whoever grabbed him. He dug his heels into ruts torn through the ferrocrete, but he couldn't find purchase. "Let me go!"

"It's too late," replied the voice of a clone.

"We need to move—now!" A familiar voice, but Obi-Wan didn't bother placing it.

Obi-Wan was dragged across the yard and beyond the inner fence of the reactor complex. Just a few short seconds later, a containment field spread from the yard around the tower all the way to its highest peak. Obi-Wan followed its climb with his eyes as he dropped flat on his back beyond the field's reach. Water poured over his face and in his eyes, and it took a moment for him to realize it was rain.

The containment field lit the entire yard in orange light, and then the reactor exploded. The orange field dulled what should have been a blinding white explosion and muted the sound to a gentle rumble.

A knife cut through Obi-Wan's chest, and he grabbed at the front of his tunic and exhaled a gasp, the air strangled out of his lungs. He felt the loss in a way he never had before—he felt Anakin die. Felt the tear in their bond, felt the subsequent gaping emptiness to which no black hole could ever compare in intensity.

"Finished, it is," Master Yoda said, and he stood at a distance with his gimer stick to the ground, both hands folded on top of it. "Gone is Darth Sidious at last."

Many others gathered around. Clones, Jedi, civilians. For such a crowd to have formed, they must have known in advance what would happen. They had been waiting. It had all been planned.

"Anakin is dead," Obi-Wan said. It was all he could say. He scrambled to his feet, barely aware he still had his lightsaber in hand. He nearly dropped it as his fingers trembled. All around him, faces looked at him in concern—pity—but also much apathy and acceptance.

He didn't know what else to say, and he staggered to one side on legs that suddenly, somehow, couldn't bear his weight.

You killed him. He wanted to say, to ask, but he couldn't.

"General," Cody said, and he reached out a hesitant hand. He'd been near, probably the one who pulled him to safety. Kit Fisto was also near—he'd known. They'd pulled him away at the precise moment needed, because they all knew.

Obi-Wan didn't know what else to say or do, and so he walked. He walked away from the reactor, from the crowd, but he could not walk away from the sudden, inexplicable emptiness in himself.

Ahsoka stood on the outer fringes of the gathering, her own hand clasped at her chest. One lightsaber in hand, the other in a puddle on the ground. Rex stood alongside her, a hand on her shoulder. The reactor's lights flashed in her eyes. She didn't bother looking at Obi-Wan, and he trudged past her.

It was no consolation that she felt it, too.

The shroud of the dark side should have lifted, but Obi-Wan felt it stronger than ever before. It felt like a complete and utter failure, all of it.

And so he kept walking, alone, and the rain soaked him through.

"We're here, as you requested," Master Windu said, leaning forward in his chair with his hands pressed together between his knees. He waved his hand to indicate Obi-Wan's usual place. "Have a seat, Kenobi, and speak."

Obi-Wan stood in the center of the room surrounded by full chairs. All of the High Council members had returned in light of the situation with Sidious and the potential fall of the Temple. Now they gathered at his call. He didn't move for his chair and instead glanced at the only other vacant seat. The one in which Anakin usually sat.

"Did you formulate your plan with the intention of leaving Anakin in that reactor with Sidious?" Obi-Wan turned his attention from Master Windu and then locked eyes with Master Yoda. He already knew the answer. Asking was a formality.

"Our intention, it was not," Master Yoda said. "But a likely result, it was."

"Skywalker knew the risk, and he was in agreement with us," Master Windu added.

Obi-Wan stiffened. He swallowed a persistent lump in his throat that had choked him for the three days since Anakin's death. He'd tried to meditate, to find peace, but the Force seemed to abandon him. He found no solace there, only a strange, deafening silence he'd never experienced before. All he found in his inner world were the future memories of letting Anakin burn and walking away.

"You knew he would never escape and sent him anyway." Obi-Wan stifled the condemnation in his tone. In his mind, he understood. His heart did not. "You sent him to his death."

"Calm yourself, Kenobi," Master Windu said, and he leaned further forward. "This is war. Knowing full well what we asked of him, Skywalker chose to do his duty."

"Made his decision, young Skywalker did." Master Yoda tapped his gimer stick on the floor, and it echoed in the room that suddenly seemed so hollow and devoid of life. "A youngling he was not, and a Jedi he was. To serve the greater good, a Jedi must."

"Why was I not included in this decision?" Obi-Wan pulled back his shoulders. At his question, a few of the others exchanged looks, but most maintained a hard gaze on him. Obi-Wan remained equally as firm. "Did you think I might oppose the decision to send Anakin to his death?"

"As a Jedi," Master Windu started, "he made his decision—"

"He was in no condition to choose," Obi-Wan snapped, and even he was taken aback by the sudden incline in his voice.

A pregnant pause followed, and again a few of the others shared furtive looks.

"We are masters of our emotions, not the other way around." Master Windu sat straight in his seat and set his hands on the arms. Casual. Intimidating. Arrogant. As if he had just won an argument. "Skywalker has always had the tools he needed to rule his fear and his anger."

"No, he didn't," Obi-Wan said. "We assumed he did, we expected him to understand, but he didn't, because we—" The rest of his words caught on the tip of his tongue. Because we didn't teach him.

No, because Obi-Wan didn't teach him. Because Obi-Wan didn't understand the suffering of a former slave, the agony of a child taken from his mother he knew and loved dearly. No Jedi could teach him how to let go, because no Jedi truly understood what it was like. And Anakin didn't know or understand, either, why he had been so different. As a result, he isolated himself and tucked away everything he didn't understand, parceled it off and played a role while inside he suffocated and died.

A flame of anger fluttered to life in Obi-Wan's chest, a hot coal waiting for a breath of air to ignite it. He looked straight at Master Yoda, unflinching.

"That very same day, Anakin brought the building down on top of himself. You knew very well what decision he would make when you asked him." The flames stoked, anger bubbled into his words. "We used Anakin's emotions against him when it suited our needs and condemned him for them when it didn't. You knew how he would answer, you asked him, and you let him go. You sent him to his death—you killed him."

Silence devoured the room, and anger burst to life in Obi-Wan. Not at them, but at himself. If he had returned to Anakin sooner, if he had convinced Anakin of his worth, perhaps the end result would have been different. Padmé had been right. Obi-Wan gave up on Anakin, so Anakin did, too.

Obi-Wan killed Anakin.

"Meditate, you should," Master Yoda said, not unkindly, but with a strange stiffness to his voice, as though he'd heard enough. "Refocus, you must, for soon change the galaxy will. Ready we must be."

Obi-Wan looked beyond Master Yoda to the first slivers of light peeking over the horizon. Bright orange and pink clouds painted the skyline of an otherwise lackluster sky. A few beams of sunlight cut through the darkness like bright beacons calling starships home.

He had tried to understand for the past three days, thought of where they went wrong again, how he had failed again. And with his current memories, the memories of his future self, and Anakin's entire lifetime laid bare before him, he put the puzzle pieces together.

In that strange in-between moment between night and day, all he felt was peace. Something in him cracked and broke, and in doing so, became whole. The present and the future aligned in such a way that he realized how blind he had been in the past and in the future. Now he understood Qui-Gon, understood Anakin, understood Sidious' far-reaching deceptions and the horrible ways in which they'd all been played. He understood, and he wondered how no one else did.

"Yes," he said, and he stared only at the brightening sky. "I will give the dark side no purchase, and I will trust in the Force. I will do what I must." He slipped his lightsaber, his life and a symbol of all he had believed in for as long as he lived, from his belt. It sat as deadweight in his hand. He took three confident steps forward and laid the lightsaber at Master Yoda's feet. "But not here."

"Obi-Wan." A stern, warning tone from Master Windu, as if he were speaking to a naïve youngling.

Obi-Wan met his fierce gaze with one of his own. He would not be intimidated by anyone. He was no child, no fool.

"If knowing the future has shown us anything, it is that the galaxy changed, and we as an Order failed to change with it. It has left us behind in its shadow." Obi-Wan turned and made for the door but paused after only a few steps. His hands curled into fists at his sides. "I believe in what we stand for. But in our obligation, it seems we forgot how to care."

He half turned to face the others, towards Master Yoda, but all he saw was the dazzling light of the sun swallowing the darkness.

"Did you never think it strange that the Force hid Anakin from us for nine years? That it gave him a lifetime of memories to make him so different from us?" Obi-Wan asked, and he meant it for himself as much as them. "And then the Force went out of its way to bring Qui-Gon, the single Jedi who would understand, to Anakin. Any of you would have left him there—I would have left him there. But the Force brought Qui-Gon to him."

Emotion rippled through his words and cut at his chest.

"Maybe the Force never intended for us to change Anakin into the perfect Jedi but instead for Anakin to change us." Obi-Wan turned his back to the rising sun. Blazing light cast his shadow at his feet, and he followed it to the door. As he swept the door open and exited without looking back, he said, "We killed him instead."

Obi-Wan leaned against the wall of the Temple and watched the sun spread its colors over Processional Way. He had come and gone from the Temple for nearly the past four decades, but a sense of loss gnawed in his chest as he thought this might be the last going without return. Despite the momentary grief, the decision was right. Not one based on emotion—no, for the past several days, he'd felt hardly anything at all if one did not count the emptiness left by Anakin's death.

He moved on instinct, survived on instinct, and trusted the Force to put him where he ought to be. And every conclusion he reached led him down those stairs and away from the Temple.

It was as though a part of Obi-Wan died with Anakin, and Obi-Wan had little understanding of the part that remained. The same thing had happened to his future self. Anakin's betrayal and the death of his true self, as Luke had called it, had set Obi-Wan adrift for nearly twenty years. Hoping, but hopeless.

Obi-Wan scrubbed his face with both hands and peeled himself off the wall. If circumstances had been different and it had been anyone but Anakin, he likely would have agreed with the Council. If it had been him dying in the reactor with Sidious, he would have agreed with it. A Jedi had a duty to the greater good, to the many people who would be saved at the cost of one life. One life, when weighed against all others, was inconsequential.

And yet Anakin had always cared for that one life and had always been acutely aware of singular existences. They'd blamed it on his need for attachments, and certainly that was partway true, but now Obi-Wan wondered. Qui-Gon had thought the same, that one life could have inexplicable value and worth, and if the Force deemed it worthy to lead that one life into your path, you ought not take it lightly.

Jar Jar had stumbled into Qui-Gon's path, and Qui-Gon helped him. Jar Jar wound up playing a vital role in freeing Naboo. For that matter, the same could be said of Anakin. If not for his meddling, the droid army likely would have overrun them then and there. Sometimes, the one was necessary to protect the many.

Sometimes the one did matter.

Or maybe Obi-Wan's own attachment to Anakin had clouded his reason. He sighed and walked towards the steps bathed in golden light. Towards the path that would take him away from the Temple, away from the only life he'd ever known.

A familiar and high-pitched scream gave him pause, and he half turned near the stairs. R2 barreled out of the Temple, lights flaring wildly, and zigzagged along the walkway. Anakin's nuisance of a droid locked on and careened straight at him, then slammed into his leg and beeped furiously at him.

"What in the—" Obi-Wan staggered back and grabbed his sore leg, bewildered because he hadn't actually expected R2 to hit him. R2 beeped at him and rammed him again. "Artoo, what are you—"

All of the lights died. R2's flashing lights went out, and all of its colors flicked off. Obi-Wan had never seen the little droid in such a manner, not even during routine maintenance, when R2 usually still had plenty to chatter about in its nonsensical way. Now it was dead, silent and dark.

"Obi-Wan!" Padmé appeared out of the Temple. With one hand she lifted her long gown so she could hurry towards him, with her other hand she held under her belly. She wore dark blue, but the gown shimmered gold in the sunlight. Obi-Wan turned away and had half a mind to flee down the steps before she called out again, "Obi-Wan, please wait!"

He froze just as R2 had and stared at the warm glow of the sky.

"Obi-Wan," she said, puffing hard, her voice tinged with emotion.

He couldn't look at her. She'd warned him, and he hadn't listened. Hadn't had time to listen, with how quickly everything transpired, but Obi-Wan should have tried to do something from the start. The pain from Anakin's future betrayal had destroyed his empathy in the present. Anakin was dead because of it. Instead of looking at her, Obi-Wan looked down at R2.

"He's been like that for days," Padmé said, and she wrung her hands together in front of her before setting one on top of the droid. "He's worried about Anakin."

One corner of Obi-Wan's lips crept upwards. She and Anakin had the same tendency to personify the astromech droid. Then his lips fell, and he frowned. An icy dagger cut through him, and he managed to lift his face and meet Padmé's eyes.

"How is he?" Padmé asked. A cloud of fear swirled around her in the Force, but she maintained as much a rigid expression as she could. Tears shone in her eyes. She restrained them. "Where is Anakin?"

Obi-Wan stared at her. That was all he could do. They hadn't bothered to tell her that her husband was dead. By the look in her eyes and the heavy cloud smothering her, he gathered she already suspected as much. But no one bothered to confirm.

Anakin's sacrifice had been glossed over in reports and in most dialogue outside the High Council. Certainly the Senate hadn't bothered to discuss the sacrifice of a Jedi to stop a Sith Lord, particularly when that Jedi had been recently branded as Darth Vader.

Obi-Wan stared too long, and tears flooded Padmé's eyes. She gave the slightest shake of her head. Her hand rose to her chest and squeezed the fabric of her gown.

"No," she said, breathless and hardly audible. "He's…"

"I'm so sorry," he said to her, an echo of his future self. Both times, he relayed the news of Anakin's death, and both times by Anakin's choice. Yet this time was so, so very different. Heat stung behind his eyes.

"No," Padmé said, and she broke down and wept. She covered her face with a shaking hand. Through her sobs, she added, "It was supposed to be different." Half turning, she staggered towards the railing covering the outer edges of the Way. She clasped it with one hand, but her knees gave beneath her. Obi-Wan caught her weight and helped her down. She sat with her back to the wall. In tears, she repeated, "It was supposed to be different." Then she buried her face in both hands and wept.

Obi-Wan allowed himself to sit at her side, and he leaned against the wall. R2's top swiveled in their direction, but the droid didn't make a sound and didn't flash a single light. And for one sad, silly moment, Obi-Wan considered that Anakin's unruly love had somehow managed to bring even a droid to life. He smiled at the thought. The golden light of the sun cascaded over them, and the sky turned vibrant blue, but all of the colors swam together before his eyes.

Tears threatened to spill as Obi-Wan spoke, and his strength failed him.

"I am so sorry."