Epilogue
Ahsoka searched the wreckage for days.
She woke in an escape pod when the world was still smoldering, klicks away from the wreckage of the town built into the sand. The fleet of thousands had scattered, some reduced to mounds of sharp debris, others fleeing the system to slink back to whatever layer of Sith hells they were from.
The presence of the Jedi, which she had felt since before she knew how to pronounce the name... was just gone.
An airlock had been opened in her heart.
She had stumbled into the midday heat, head buzzing and mouth full of wool. Her lightsabers were still attached to her belt, but she didn't remember replacing them there. The distinct memory of Anakin's eyes flitted through her mind, him looking at her for the last time before running deeper into the bowels of the Destroyer...then he was gone, and she was alone, twisting her fingers tighter around her weapons and slashing through the reams of metal and blaster fire. She had fought until blood dripped down her arms from callouses turned against her. She remembered severed heads, arms, torsos cut in two still burbling from cauterization. She remembered punching her blade through the last of the Senatorial guards, the weak guttural noise that stood in for his last words.
Then darkness.
The desert planet's terrain seemed suddenly mountainous, reams of sand falling like tropical waterfalls over her head. The planet's pair of suns had long been obscured from the dust and debris that continued to slice down at harsh angles against her already raw skin, blistering. She had taken a cloak off of a corpse to cover her sunburnt shoulders, taken someone else's boots when the rubber bottoms of hers had melted away. Forced to improvise when her calloused hands began to bleed again, she had taken strips of cloth off of a mottled seller's tent, wrapping them over and over again until she could only think of Anakin, and how he had taught her to wrap her knuckles before they had sparred with their fists. He had said it was because any reason but the real one she had overheard him saying to Rex one late night aboard The Resolute. That he had lost a hand due to his rashness, his inability to protect the ones he loved. He would not let her lose skin—he wouldn't let her lose anything—because of him.
She had to look up to blink back a precious amount of moisture.
Jumping down from her perch high on a grounded Destroyer, she landed and rolled to slow her descent back down to the underlayers of its berth. The lack of breeze had her cloak sticking, itching at her back, the sun merciless despite it being early morning. But lack of breeze meant perhaps the sand would not move quite so fast today, and she would not be forced to watch her work of uncovering slowly shift back into meaningless hills.
Ahsoka sucked at her teeth, feeling their grit, their sour taste.
Again, to the hard task of the survivors. She passed through the open mouth of the tombstone-looking ship, nose straining deep into the planet's crust. The door she had hacked herself the day before still gaped at her in horror of her duty, of her resolve to finish it. She would drag out every last comrade, bury them pit by pit, and let the Force reclaim them in a bone-aching, blood-draining process. Already, counting the corpses proved too much for her dehydrated, abused mind. Over two hundred? That hardly seemed to touch the amount of cold hands she had clasped as she dragged them away from their sites of death. Scavengers often would join her for short periods, where she would hiss at their dishonor to her once-comrades in arms. Brown-hooded creatures with less remorse than her, but more food and water, she would reluctantly trade with. A canteen of stale water for the working comm units she had found off of Master Mundi's clone troopers found dead near the city limits. Tasteless food for key parts of deflector shield generator. Weapons, reactor parts, uniforms, she began to offer them up in hoards in order to get the sustenance to continue for just another day, just enough time to find him, bury him.
The days the junkers came in their creaking, crawling vessel was a joyless relief.
As was each incinerated corpse that wasn't his. Each tabard that wasn't his. Each lightsaber hilt, crystals smashed, that wasn't his. She sought comfort in gathering the materials for pyres and feeling the searing heat on her already raw skin because closure was only good if you wanted to staunch the bleeding, the hoping, the small images that flitted through her brain: Anakin behind the pilot seat, Anakin racing down the halls in his chair, Anakin on the ground, eyes wide as the pain from the Separatist tank sets in.
She turned sharply as the ship's innards congealed in front of her. In the Force, she felt for life—any life—nearby. Something like the Light, but dimmer, calmer, rumbled back its answer. Nothing. Nothing for miles.
Then.
Ahsoka looked up, her eyes wide as the distinct flit of a form brushed past her consciousness.
In that moment, Ahsoka could feel his lips on hers, their victory celebration against the impossible, cruel galaxy. She could feel his hand at the small of her back, his silent confidence. She could sense his exhaustion, his sadness, and the clinging scent of hope. He was looking. He was looking for her.
Her hands shook. She stuffed them deep into her stolen cloak, but couldn't suppress the shiver that rolled through her.
She could go to him.
She could run to him, neglecting the survivor's work, let him help shut the airlock sucking at her soul. She could heal her wounds and talk through the voices in her head and hope with him, let his flame help revive hers which flickered after each funeral pyre she lit and watched smolder. Force, she could let herself love him—Ahsoka could feel him calling for her, his beautiful, ruined voice shouting her name into the unyielding winds.
She could go to him.
But instead, she shouldered her burden, and walked deeper into the dark.
Obi-Wan felt the last intakes of breath of every Jedi he had begged to come to that Force-forsaken planet.
Plo Koon had burned with his ship, his escape from a pursuing ship too narrow even for him.
Aayla Secura crying out as a Sith's soldier impaled her, others surrounding her prone body just to be cut to pieces.
Luminara Unduli fought beside her Padawan, their perfect harmony faltering as the young one took a blaster bolt to her head, and Unduli became quickly outnumbered.
Vokara Che had burned brightly in his half-conscious state, her final moments one where she pushed aside her clone companions with a thrill of the Force, the collapsing destroyer swallowing her in its descent.
Yoda's presence had gone dark.
Thoughts of death with dignity consumed Obi-Wan's lucid moments, his broken body lying in the ship detritus.
That was before Padmé had found him.
He thought she was a figment, an imagined savior to comfort him in his last moments in his corporeal vessel. But she had touched his face, had wrapped his wounds, had set him on an unforgiving sheet of hot metal and dragged him across the sand. His ears did not seem to function; her mouth moved without noise, the world silent around them. When he was conscious, she was crying, pulling them toward something with each sinking step. When he was not conscious, the Force did not console him.
All at once, the harsh suns had been traded out for a green light, barely strong enough to illuminate his surroundings. Some sort of abode, humble in its circular roof and stagnant air. Padmé hovered over him, her presence being traded out only by marred clone trooper faces—Wolfe and Rex, with tired faces and scarred bodies. They marked his days, where for a few lucid moments Obi-Wan would see a face, see lips form words with no sounds attached, before once again he fell into darkness.
Darkness where he saw Anakin's eyes, over and over again, with their receding golden glow.
As he became lucid once again, it was Rex over him. The world was still silent. An iron-like fist closed viselike around his solar plexus, twisting cruelly, and he was writhing, teeth gritted. His wide eyes met Rex's, his spine arching.
He watched the captain's lips moved, over and over, the same consonants in the gathering dark.
Breathe.
That was the mantra, surely ringing out somewhere beyond where his ears could compute. Obi-Wan sucked in a scraggly hiss of humid air between clenched jaws, another through his broken nose, another, another. The dark receded. The fist loosened its grip on his interior. He was left feeling the cold sweat dry on his skin, the salty itchiness making his flesh prickle and his muscles shake.
He watched as Rex reached for his hand, and Obi-Wan could feel the man's heartbeat mumble into his palm.
Relax, Rex seemed to be saying. He tried to keep his face in focus, but the room was beginning to spin beneath his swollen eyelids.
When had he felt this empty, this broken? The Force, where was it? Hollowed out with a rough edge left behind in its wake, a cracked vessel gone and shattered itself, the Light it once held seeped out into the greedy, sucking sand. He sensed no being, though he knew that the abode in which he stayed was full—Padmé occupied the 'fresher often in the early morning light, emptying the meager, hard-fought contents of her stomach, and Rex stood beside him now. There were others, too, that he caught in flashes. Faces of clone troopers, dirty and blood-streaked. Faces of civilian lifeforms taking refuge. They looked together like the salvaged parts of a shipwreck, all harsh angles and scarred limbs.
Obi-Wan found the strength to twitch his fingers in Rex's palm. A field sign, nothing too complicated for Obi-Wan's uncoordinated attempt at communication: Anakin's code signal, over and over, until his hand had exhausted itself.
Rex's lips moved. Obi-Wan shook his head, signed bad. Missing.
Rex seemed to understand him. Gathering a bit of flimsi from behind him, he wrote: You're safe. Anakin is missing in action. So is Ahsoka. I look for them every day. Everything—the temple, the Republic, the Jedi Order—everything is gone. Leo gave his life to report that message. Now, Padmé has us in an old farmhouse with any other survivors we could find. You were badly injured.
Obi-Wan forced another breath through his swollen nose. Battle, he signed. Rex nodded.
If there was a victor, it wasn't us, he wrote back in shaky standard.
The next time Obi-Wan woke, he was already propped upright. Rex had left for his daily search through the vast ruins of Tatooine's desert plains, and Padmé had taken his post. She sat patiently with flimsi in her lap. Obi-Wan allowed himself to notice her stomach, allowed himself to touch the Force and find life in an overwhelming rush of Light stemming from the woman sitting next to him. He was left stunned, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes.
Padmé was... she was pregnant.
Obi-Wan found his hands had a wider range of motion than before, and he placed one rough palm over his mouth. Light continued to wrap itself around him, filling his broken vessel behind his solar plexus and overflowing. The child—no, children, Obi-Wan was certain of it—were strong in the Force, selfless in their sharing of strength. Obi-Wan let himself be wrapped in the Force's embrace given freely by these unborn beings, and with a grief-filled certainty, felt an echo of Anakin's touch in their healing.
Obi-Wan opened his eyes and found Padmé staring breathlessly at him, one hand against her growing stomach, one hand grasping his.
They found, despite it all, they could smile through their tears.
Anakin retched, then retched again. Nothing came up. He wasn't sure what would have happened if something did, the mask with red tinted lenses digging into the corners of his lips and closing off his face to the world. He had worn it for two weeks now, his movements getting steadier.
He had saved them, he had saved them; his heart refused to believe the price was too high.
Still, the sickness that he now allowed to roil freely in his veins, the Dark, oozing in and around his heart, kept him immobile, unable to leave his quarters for more than a few hours. All of this power, the machine's ability to make him walk again, and the conflict inside of him would creep up once again and he would have to kneel, breathing heavily as the Force whipped chaotically inside of him.
Sidious wasn't calling him Anakin Skywalker anymore. And Anakin had stopped fighting it.
Because Anakin Skywalker was a boy from the planet he had just helped destroy, a boy in love with Padmé Amidala, a would-be father, devoted to serving justice and peace to the galaxy. Anakin Skywalker had saved Obi-Wan, his best friend, his brother, in his final moments. And then he had died, someone—no, something else born from his ashes.
So his soul had been sold out. The price wasn't too high.
Somewhere, Padmé continued to raise the child he thought the Separatist tank had taken away from him and his beloved. Somewhere, Obi-Wan continued to pulse out waves of pain but pain meant alive and alive meant he had a second chance. Somewhere, Ahsoka's anguish reached even through their rusted bond, a one-way comm link he could hear but could not answer. Sidious would know, and every moment of this crawling disgust would be for nothing.
He was told by Qui-Gonn Jinn that he would save the galaxy someday. He hadn't.
But he had saved Obi-Wan, saved Rex and Ahsoka, saved Padmé, saved his child. And if those five people weren't his galaxy to protect, then he didn't know what was.
Anakin felt his presence before he saw him, his new master. Palpatine's gold eyes peered at him from the doorway to his cell, not unlike the one he had stayed in during the times he was sent on away missions on The Resolute. Small, with barely enough room to pace a maddening circle between the 'fresher and the cot. His wheelchair wouldn't have been able to maneuver it. But then again, he had left that behind him when he had knelt at this monster's feet.
He was on his knees now, facing the cramped toilet, chest still moving too fast despite the oxygen being forced into his lungs by the suit. Slowly, he shifted.
"Master," he croaked past the bile taste coating his throat.
"Get up," Sidious said. With the suit's extended energy, his legs did not even shake as he did so.
Anakin stood taller than Sidious, the gap between the two men heightened by the suit. Or maybe it was Anakin, remembering what it was like to face him in his chair, head flung back against the Temple floor, a bleeding-red 'saber held into the crevice under his collar bone, that noticed this difference so starkly.
The price wasn't too high.
He followed Sidious out of his cell and into the larger body of the ship, a busy yet silent space with a wide viewport that boasted in the trillions of hyperspace streaks it displayed. He had visited the place twice before, in his more lucid moments, when Sidious unlocked his plasma-reinforced shield door and beckoned him follow. The officers were efficient, some even faces he remembered—Tarkin, that slimy bureaucrat, stood with a snarky smile on his pale, thin lips as Anakin passed him. Some clone captains and some lieutenants who had lost to their battles with the chips. Some senators Padmé would have known the name of. Others, though, in the masses that Anakin had no recollection of. Humanoids with pale, sunken faces working endless shifts under the Emperor's thumb.
This was the galaxy now, Anakin saw it. It was empire, risen from the pointless war between Separatist and Republic. Their extinction was for the better, Anakin felt that deep down, deeper than his marrow, right to the shriveling part of his heart that watched good beings die for nothing. Peace came at an inconceivable price, as did life.
Sidious inclined his head toward him just slightly, just enough that Anakin caught a glimpse of his yellow eyes. "You are restless," he said.
"Yes, my master."
"You think of her."
Always.
Silence returned as hyperspace melted away from them, the sickening spin of light he had once seen as freedom now making his stomach turn inside him. Space returned to its pinpricks of light and inky darkness. But something else, something... moonlike.
"This is how we establish peace to our galaxy, Lord Vader," Sidious said in his crawling tone. "This is how you atone. Is that not what you seek after?"
Force, it was all he wanted. To be able to look Padmé in the eye and say he was sorry for not being there at their kid's birth, to not teach them how to pilot their first ship, for not being there to watch them grow up. To be able to let Ahsoka know he was alive, and to tell her how proud of her he was. To grasp Obi-Wan's hand as he rode out the pain, to be able to lessen it even a little.
To sit in his pain instead of healing in that kriffing medical capsule was to atone. To struggle for each breath was to atone. To still be conscious was to atone.
To... to follow the path the Emperor sets before him, to keep them safe, to get up mindlessly when asked and to respond in obedience. He would atone.
"Yes, my master."
"Good, good." The Emperor looked into his red-lensed eyes. "Then we will begin construction immediately."
End.
Author's note: I hope you enjoyed "Still Conscious." The journey has been long, and for those who have been through it all with me, you have my deep gratitude and admiration. Thank you, and I hope you check out "Still Remember," a series of one-shots related to the relationship I began to explore in this story between Obi-Wan and Anakin.
Cheers,
-Gabe