AN: This is it. The end. Again, thank you all for your kind words and reviews - even the criticizms. They all helped with the creative process, and I would not have gotten this far if there were no readers reviewing! It's been a fun ride. Be sure to watch for my next fic (hopefully soon) from Palpatines' POV called 'InSidious'.

Part Six:

'And he piled upon the whale's white hump, the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. If his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it.'

-Moby Dick

I knew this day would come. Ever since I'd left him scarred and burned on Mustafar, I knew it.

When I couldn't bring myself to kill him, I knew:

One day, he would kill me.

'This is the end for you, my 'master.''

And now I hear him. Suck-hisss.

"I have been waiting for you, Obi-Wan, we meet again at last." A voice, too deep to be natural, too foreign to be his. Anakin, what have they done to you? "The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner, now I am the Master."

And I opened myself fully to the Force, feeling for the first time the full brunt of his dark presence. My former student, consumed by years of hate and anger. Even the new Sith's presence on Mustafar was nothing compared to the black cloud that now shrouded Darth Vader. I ignite my lightsaber.

"Only a Master of evil, Darth.'

'Then I will do what I must.'

'You'll try…'

Blue and red clash, sizzle, burn, and finally repel. I know in that first strike that this is a battle I cannot win. But there are alternatives to fighting…

He strikes, I parry.

He hates, I pity.

This is not Sith against Jedi, as it was twenty years ago on Mustafar. This is brother against brother. Hate against compassion. Greed against love; for Padme was right – even after all these years, she is still right.

'There is still good in him…I know…there is still…'

I feel it deep inside him even as he fights me. I feel him in there, somewhere. He fights with himself even as he fights with me. Somewhere, somehow, my student, the man I had loved, calls out a warning to me.

"You should not have come back," Anakin warns me.

' I'll give you a chance, Obi-Wan. For old times' sake. Walk away. Go someplace out of the way. Retire. Meditate. That's what you like, isn't it? You don't have to fight…'

I look into the black, expressionless transparisteel that serves as his eyes and for a flash, I see him. The real him. My student, my friend, pleading with me, desperate.

'Don't force me to kill you,' he says. I know it's just a memory, I know…

But I also know he's in there. Behind that mask, he is looking back at me, if only for that moment. I find myself wondering what he looks like under there. The man he has become; the man he would have become. Should have become.

How would things have been different if he had gone away with Padme instead of fighting me? How would the galaxy have changed if Luke and Leia were raised by their parents? If Anakin had turned to love and not to hate?

'You turned her against me!'

'You have done that yourself.'

'You will not take her from me!'

At the time, I hadn't understood the consuming possessiveness he felt towards his wife. Later when, as Yoda liked to say, the dust settled and the water became clear, it was so obvious that the realization of what we had done to him became a slow, excruciating death to my heart.

It was all our fault.

The Jedi.

All of us.

Our fault.

I know Yoda blames himself. He will not talk of it with me, putting himself in emotional exile as well as physical, but I felt it. We failed him. Together, we all did. And only now can we look back on our actions, see what we did wrong, and weep.

If only we had…embraced his feelings rather than suppress them. If we had allowed him contact with his mother instead of forbidding it. Blessed his marriage, not forced him to secrecy…

He, and all of us, would be alive today. Ultimately, the entire Republic depended on one boy's happiness.

For happiness was the only possession a Jedi was not required to renounce.

For in the end, happiness is all anyone really has.

And in the end, it was what we, in our wisdom, denied him.

Twirling, slashing, blocking, we gradually move into the hangar bay. I see the Falcon in the corner of my eye. Yes…yes, I feel, rather than think. Here is where it will end.

The Chosen One. That is what we called him. Pushed at him since he first became my Padewan. After a while, he could not help but believe it. We had known how important he was, how important it was to be 'chosen' –

But we didn't know what that meant.

Chosen to defeat the Sith? That was the belief, but now I see we had it terribly wrong.

'You are a much wiser Jedi than I could ever hope to be.'

He was the Chosen One. The New Beginning that would bring balance to the Force. Only, we didn't realize –

It was we who had caused the imbalance.

And it was he who could fix it. He's always been good at fixing things, but we would not let him. He tried, but we suppressed. We trained him in our image, when really, it was he who should have been training us in his.

Instead, we forced him into the mould of the perfect Jedi, and in the end, he had no choice but to rebel. He had taught me as much as I was willing to learn, but even that much was hard won. The prophecy will now be fulfilled by another – one we cannot corrupt, for that is what we had done. The one who will rebuild what, through our pride, we allowed to be destroyed.

And now, the last vestiges of that forgotten time fight it out in a battle of who-said-what, and you-should-have-done-this.

And inevitably, I loose.

Continued?