A/N: Just a quick one shot that I wrote in an hour that probably should have been spent on studying for Poli Sci. But what's more interesting: the CDN PM or Obi-Wan? Honestly!
Thank you to my wonderful beta for telling me that yes, this was postable, and for patching up any rough spots! (huggles to Temple Mistress)
Enjoy!
Flying
Wind whipped his ginger hair back off his features, spinning the rough brown weave of his cloak behind him. It trailed icy fingers over his cheeks and throat in a lover's caress, filling his lungs with arctic breath that was exhilarating as well as blissfully numbing.
Sunset on Coruscant.
There was always wind on the planet, whispering through the lower levels untouched by light of day, and howling between the skyscrapers, the impositions that sentient beings had placed to mar the horizon line. There was a soothing calm in its shrieks as it whistled over the buildings, a permanence in its utter mutability. Ever shifting, ever the same. Unchanging in its very changeability.
Sunset.
The immense glassy structures glistened in the dying light, sheeted with gold and rose and saffron. Reflecting each other's image, refracting the light until it splintered into a thousand fragments and scattered across the face of the planet. Liquid golden sunlight, pure and unmarred; nature creating beauty out of technology's arrogance.
He closed his eyes for a brief instant, tilting his face back towards the sun, seeing the muted brilliance through the tightly shut lids. Opening them once more, he blinked sharply, blinded by the dazzling light. He held his hands up before his face, turning them over, palm upwards, staring at the way they seemed to glow before his blue eyes. Glowing as though they were dipped in the ethereal radiance, as though he was something more than mortal. As though the light was some physical manifestation of the Force. Somehow, the unnatural beauty of the dying light made everything seem more… concrete, more alive, as though that transient moment of perfect illumination could reveal the true nature of everything it touched.
He wanted to drown in that light, wanted to bare his soul to its touch. Wanted to be healed in its radiance.
Radiant light.
He choked back a sob, remembering the one who had filled his life with such perfect, unwavering light. Like the sunset, that glimmer of brightness in the dark night of the war had faded inexorably into darkness. Like a candle, it had been snuffed out, suddenly, leaving only faint whisper of intangible memory, like coiling smoke.
He came up here to remember.
He came up here to forget.
The wind moaned around the curves and walls of the Jedi Temple, a sound that echoed the silenced cries of his heart. It tore at his face, savagely plucking at his tears, tears that fragmented the light into diamond drops of blurred beauty. It tore at his robes, making them swirl out like wings behind him. Wings, like a bird, like an angel.
He was no more than a fallen angel, damned to hell now that his light, his life was gone. No more than a caged bird, singing a melancholy song of loss as it remembered the days when it was free.
Freedom.
That was what his angel had died for. Freedom.
Birds.
They swirled past him, rising from the shadowy depths of the traffic lanes below his lofty perch, their cries ripped away and lost in the unending shivering call of the wind. Buffeted by its strength, they flew on, higher and higher, until they were lost in the dazzling glare of the dying sun.
He traced their path with his eyes, a faint smile brushing his lips. His love had adored flying, racing the wind, feeling the exhilaration of the cold breeze whipping his cheeks to a flushed crimson, hair tangled and wild and beautiful. Spiralling upwards until he could almost touch the stars. His angel had flown with the wings of the Force.
He had always been too afraid to fly. Now he was falling, falling without an end in sight. Only to learn to fly, or to crash.
He didn't know which one he wanted, not anymore.
Shadows lengthened as the sun began to dip below the buildings. Following its light, he leapt up onto a higher ledge, closing his eyes as vertigo wracked his form. The wind pushed and pulled at his body, growing colder as the sun slipped away, making him stretch out one hand as though he could catch it. He didn't want to be left alone in the darkness.
Not again. Not anymore.
His love had given him wings; only his fear kept him from flying away.
Tilting his head back to catch the last rays of light, he breathed his lover's name into the wind. In its journey, perhaps it would reach that last battlefield, to whisper in his angel's ear. Whisper that he was coming.
'Anakin.'
An expression of peace suffused his features. He stepped forwards.
Flying….
The sun slipped behind the forest of buildings, plunging Coruscant into darkness.
End.
-------
"No more tears.
Grief is at an end.
Instead remembrance
Forever."
Oedipus at Colonus, lines 1776-1779
I know, I know... I always kill off Obi-Wan. But look! This time Anakin died too, right? Ok, maybe that's not so much of an improvement... Comments openly solicited!
Xtine the Pirate!