Chapter 7

Pausing only long enough to cast aside his robe, Obi-Wan followed. He caught up with his quarry inside the River Boathouse buildings, where Anakin stopped to examine his surroundings. He appeared to be searching for something, perhaps a means of escape.

"I'd feel bad for the property owners if we smashed up the place by fighting in here," quipped Kenobi with feigned nonchalance. "Surrender. This is your last chance."

Skywalker's blood was hot with a toxic mix of emotions. He had not the slightest intention of surrendering; the choices were to escape, or to defeat his old Master… or both. And so he ignited his lightsaber before him. Without cognitively expressing the thought, a part of his brain feared its blade might glow with an unexplained crimson colour, like Ahsoka's. However, it merely hummed at the ready with its usual blue. His weapon, at least, could be trusted; unlike the Jedi, or his former Master.

Anakin flung himself forward with a sequence of powerful, two-handed swings from his Form V arsenal. The older man's defensive style, honed by much practice, allowed him to parry the attacks without difficulty, sidestepping and slipping away with the skill he was known for. Even in the downtime since the end of the Wars, Obi-Wan's powers had not waned much if at all: he could use Form III lightsaber combat for hours, waiting patiently until his opponent made an error to be punished.

They were evenly matched, and as such unlikely to crown a victor quickly. The consideration brought Anakin back to the option of flight. However, he knew it was unlikely to be enough simply to run; he needed to slow down, or eliminate, his pursuer in the process. It did not suffice to try to get away, he had to stop his enemy from trying to catch him.

"You'll just have to apologize to the owners for the damage, Master," he cackled. "If you live to see them."

The younger Jedi reached deep into the Force, in a way he knew he should not. He needed power, lots of power to attempt his next trick. As his clenched fist vibrated in front of him, the Force acceded to his demands, subjugated to his will – the will of the most powerful Force user in the galaxy.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion, he recited silently. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.

He did not know where he had learnt those words, yet their effect was undeniable. The entirety of the River Boathouse buildings began to rumble around him. Hundred-year-old foundations creaked and groaned, as they detached from the depths of the ground they had been sunk into.

"What are you doing, Anakin?!" yelled Kenobi. "We're on a river of-"

He never completed his sentence, for the roof above him cracked in two with a horrific shriek of protest. A durasteel beam nearly crushed the Jedi Master, forcing him to leap away in desperation, only for another chunk of falling masonry to strike his shoulder.

"Stop! The roof's coming down!" he cried, as if he could reason with his insane, apparently suicidal friend. "You're going to kill us both!"

"Sorry, that wasn't my intention." Skywalker's face dissolved into a twisted smile, as he relaxed his fist. "I only wanted to kill you."

He twitched his hand a final time, bringing down a supporting wall with a telekinetic push. As it tumbled into a hundred pieces, he turned and ran again.

Nearly deafened by the noise of the collapse, Obi-Wan struggled to read his opponent's intentions. When he understood, his jaw dropped in dismay: Anakin was not only toppling the structure they were in, but amidst the distraction he had also moved the entire thing on its foundations. Not moved it far – only a handful of metres in raw numerical terms – yet a quite significant distance in practice.

For the boathouse was no longer at the edge of the Plasma Springs. It was in the middle of a course of water infused with bubbling white-hot plasma which emerged from under the ground at that time of year. And under the weight of the building itself, and the damage of the collapsing masonry, the space he found himself on would not remain long on the surface. He would plunge beneath the deadly waves and burn to death.

Kenobi spotted Skywalker waving his lightsaber around a stack of wooden objects, after which they broke into pieces and scattered across the floor. Having done so, his former padawan grabbed one such item that he had spared, and pushed it toward an open doorway.

Anakin was taking the only dinghy in the boathouse that remained intact, and left the others behind in the form of wreckage. As he floated his craft on the roiling waters of the Plasma Springs, he turned to wave to his former friend.

"Goodbye, Master. Maybe we'll meet again. In this timeline, or the next."

With that farewell, he leapt onto the little boat and set sail upon the deadly waterway.

"Oh no," growled Kenobi, grinding his teeth. "You're not getting rid of me so easily, boy."

In desperation he ran to the pile of smashed boats and searched for the largest fragment he could find. Incredibly, there was one that had only been slashed once, which gave him fifty percent of a vessel to play with. In whatever capacity he could use it, it would have to do. Otherwise he was dead.

With a silent invocation trusting in the will of the Force, the Jedi Master took a running start at the exit. Calling upon an augmented Force-jump, he leapt as far as he could from the threshold, and while in the air levered his half-boat into position as a platform beneath his feet. He landed in the boiling water with a controlled splash, resulting in only a few droplets on his boots. No damage was done… so far. But it would be a challenge to stay that way for long, as the churning current began to pick up speed on its way.

With some effort, Kenobi was able to hold his improvised vessel steady. Fortunately for him, Naboo pleasure-punts were made from a variety of Fhian wood selected for its low density, giving it outstanding buoyancy. Thanks to the gentle slope of the river, he also gained speed and cut into the fugitive's lead.

"You're not getting away, Anakin," he called out with a light-heartedness he did not feel. "I'm going to take you back to Coruscant for your own good. We're still Jedi, we're on the same team."

"No!" said Skywalker with fury. "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy!"

"Only a fanatic deals in absolutes."

"That's what I said to Ahsoka, but you don't believe she was here. You think I'm a murderer!"

"I told you why I can't believe your story, it's impossible." Kenobi shook his head. "Based on the facts, I have to think you killed Palpatine. But there's still good in you, you're not irredeemable. I don't think you're truly evil."

Skywalker was sick of talking. "From my point of view," he bellowed, "The Jedi are evil."

His old Master raised his saber, not without weariness. "Then you are truly lost."

They crossed swords again, swiping and stabbing from one boat to the other for too long to keep track of. When Kenobi thought he saw an opening, he leapt onto Anakin's dinghy to fight at even closer quarters. But despite the adjustment, the stalemate continued unbroken for another, equally long period.

All of a sudden, a ripple in the Force told Skywalker that something unexpected was about to happen. However, in his anger he was not able to sense what it was, to glean what the Force tried to communicate to him. His focus was tainted by his passions – his pride, his anger, his pain, his jealousy, his thirst for revenge. If he could just get one deadly swipe past the other man's defences, it would be over, and he would be free…

Obi-Wan, on the other hand, appeared to grasp what was coming. For as the boat's bottom struck a rock and slowed its forward momentum, he reacted instantly. He somersaulted through the air, landing on the bank of the river three metres away from the roiling water. The older Jedi turned to prevent his opponent from following, and succeeded in keeping him rooted to the vessel.

"You've fought well even though you're out of practice," he offered. "But enough. Give yourself up."

"Never!"

Kenobi held his arms out wide, bright blue lightsaber humming. "It's over, Anakin – I have the high ground."

"You underestimate my power."

They had discussed the scenario during his training, analysed it from both his perspective and that of Darth Maul, Count Dooku's Sith Apprentice. Performing the manoeuvre felt like Anakin's destiny, weighing upon his shoulders like the boulders he had survived in the Wexend Woods. A destiny he could not, and did not want to, shirk. He would succeed. Do or do not, there is no try.

"Don't try it!" Fear filled Obi-Wan's eyes as he realised what was coming. The old Master did not want his former Apprentice to outdo his own performance, though he knew it was likely. He wanted his victory to continue to be noteworthy in Jedi lore, a story shared by Initiates and Padawans along the corridors of the Temple. Master Kenobi won the impossible High Ground scenario, they used to say, having never seen it done with their own eyes, but only heard it recounted in myth-like terms. In future they would talk of Anakin Skywalker in that regard. Everyone would.

I may be part-time, he thought, but I'm still the greatest Knight in the galaxy. I'll show the Council. I'll show him.

Skywalker leapt high in the air, somersaulting above his former friend… who swung his saber in a devastating upward and outward movement, severing one of the younger man's arms and both of his legs in one fell swoop. The mou kei mark of contact was vicious and unforgiving, an act of dismemberment almost never used by the Jedi against living beings.

As Anakin lay face-down in the soil, his single remaining hand clawing for purchase with its mechanical fingers, Kenobi appeared heart-broken at what he had done, not triumphant.

"You were the Chosen One!" he wailed. "It was said that you would bring balance to the Force, not descend into madness."

He took three steps up the bank, and bent down to retrieve Anakin's lost weapon. The sight of a victorious enemy's hand on his laser sword made the latter's passions erupt like a helpless volcano, the pressure of aeons of repressed emotion spewing forth red-hot revulsion into the sky.

"I hate you!" he roared, his voice near-unintelligible from the trauma of his injuries. He hated Obi-Wan for slowing his progress as a Padawan, for not fighting his corner in clashes with the Council… and most of all for stealing away his only child to be raised far away on Coruscant, essentially fatherless like Anakin himself had been. But he could verbalise none of those things, emitting only a series of grunts and snarls befitting an animal more than a man.

Kenobi's response was the diametric opposite of the hatred he received. Even now, the fellow remained absolutely infuriating.

"You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you."

Those were the last words they exchanged. For as his body slipped down the riverbank, the stumps of Anakin's legs were lapped by the boiling water as it flowed past. He screamed in unbearable pain, as the plasma-suffused temperatures of over one hundred degrees began to burn his flesh through his clothing.

Once Obi-Wan staggered away, Jedi Skywalker's mutilated body slid into the water. He attempted to create a protective cocoon around himself using the Force, despite the futility of the move: without the use of his limbs to drag himself up, it was merely delaying the inevitable. No one would come to rescue him: not the dead Palpatine, not Ahsoka, not the Jedi, not the Republic he had served in battle after battle. Soon, it would be over. He was able to maintain his strength for long enough to think of Padmé and Shmila, the wife and daughter he would never see, touch or speak to again – whose possible death on the one hand, and abduction by the Jedi Order on the other, had left worse scars on his psyche than he ever acknowledged. His tears evaporated instantly under the heat of the river, rendering the act of shedding them even more pointless, for they left behind only grains of salt on his scalded cheeks.

Perhaps by virtue of reaching the end of his life, and stimulated by the lack of air to his brain as he drowned, a sudden awareness flowed through him. He knew not from where it came, only that it did not seem to have its origin in the Force he was not able to tap into for much longer.

In that moment Skywalker realised, with a resignation as deep as the riverbed below, that this was not the first time he had had this experience. Not at all.

Somehow, he had fought Obi-Wan before. At least twice. Three, four, five times? Perhaps more, in a kaleidoscope of different timelines. There was no telling how many repetitions, how many iterations they had gone through, without knowing it, without even a notion of the multiverse touching their consciousness.

Surrounded by lava. Deep in an asteroid mine. Atop the cloudcutters of an ecumenopolis. On a space station. In jungle rains. Those were the instances he could recall through a rapidly gathering haze, as his brain ran out of oxygen.

They had performed this dance before, and would do it evermore. Again and again. Like the unending cycle of the heavens, like generations of living beings consumed in the hungry maw of entropy, like rhyming episodes of poetry churned out by a grey-bearded bard. In every incarnation Anakin might take, his life would, inevitably, inexorably, collide against the rock that was Kenobi, his both loved and hated mentor, former Master and friend. Wherever in the galaxy the unexplained rift in the Force might place him next in its violation of the laws of space-time, soon thereafter he would be caught in the cogs of that same machine, crushed by the momentum of mutilation and defeat.

He would never escape. It was his Destiny. No, it was his tragedy. The Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker, a play in infinite Acts, staged not inside a venue like the Galaxies Opera House, but in the open, a space opera taking place across the very galaxy itself. The futility of such a story without a moral made him shed one last tear of indignation, bafflement, and most of all, despair.

And then he could weep no more, for he sank into an infinite well of darkness.

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CAUTION: IS THIS THE END?!

If you're satisfied with this ending, stop here.

Otherwise, keep reading. And may the Force be with you.