Title: Tell Him.
Author: JediDreams
A/N: I own nothing. No money is being made by me, just George.
Tell Him
Sickness hung in Obi-Wan's belly like a leaden ball, twisting and churning. The silence that filled the massive halls of the Temple was the silence of a tomb. Death reverberated off the walls and echoed soundlessly through the cavernous rooms with their vaulted ceilings. The bodies strewn across the floors soaked up any sound, as if they'd somehow gained the power to mute every noise with their silence. The red-haired Jedi walked slowly, one hand unconsciously covering his mouth as if to contain any sounds of grief that might spring forth of their own accord. Behind him, Yoda's gimer stick clicked against the tiles with unnaturally loud taps, and the tiny master's labored breathing was like a shout ringing through the empty corridors.
Obi-Wan felt like he would have liked to cry, but tears could not push past the heavy barrier of that oppressive silence. His heart throbbed inside his chest until it felt like it was about to explode through the skin and bone and muscle. His hand moved unconsciously from his mouth to his chest, where he could feel its heavy thudding against his palm. He stopped in front of the body of a youngling, lying with her mouth open in a dying scream, a scorched hole through her narrow little chest. The pain in his chest doubled, and his heart seemed to choke him. He stood looking down at her, struggling to breathe, until Yoda finally reached him. The Master gave a small cry and knelt beside the girl's body, grief bowing his head and hunching him into an even smaller shape.
"Ah, little Veelie," he said softly. "So gentle she was, and now…struck down! By an enemy with a cowardly heart, that he would kill even younglings!" The Master's grief swamped Obi-Wan, and he closed his eyes against the painful sight, willing his lungs to keep expanding, taking in the oxygen required to keep him alive. In the face of such tragedy, the act seemed almost selfish, traitorous somehow…but he had to keep going. The Force whispered to him heavily that there was much yet to be done before he could surrender to the crushing pain of this terrible day.
Obi-Wan opened his eyes sadly, looking around the wide corridor. Many of the bodies here were small, far too small. They were near the crèche, and he didn't think he could make himself go into that room, where the tiniest and most innocent of the young Force-sensitive babies had been slaughtered. A half-hearted but nonetheless thorough scan of the nearby room confirmed his intuition that there was no life to be found in there. Moving slowly, Obi-Wan stepped quietly around the youngling and turned down a corridor to the left, stretching out his senses in hopes that he might yet find survivors.
The Master found himself following his feet blindly, his attention focused on seeking out any faint hint of life. His every step echoed in the cavernous silence, but he didn't hear them. His senses zeroed in on the still form of a Togorian lying beneath one of the massive windows near the far wall. Obi-Wan crossed the hall quickly, kneeling beside the figure. The Togorian's chest still moved fractionally, but as Obi-Wan reached for his Force-signature, he knew he was too late. The gorgeous gray-striped fur was matted with blood in half a dozen places, and the bright green eyes were glazed over and glassy. Even as he tried to feed the healing energy of the Force into the dying Jedi, he felt it dissipate with the Togorian's last breath. Obi-Wan knelt beside the dead Jedi for a moment, head bowed, feeling grief settle still more heavily on his shoulders. When he slowly stood up, his eyes were still fastened on the dead Jedi. A frown crossed his face as he took in the bloodstained tunic…smock…Healer's smock…
Obi-Wan was running, his boots pounding on the tile like thunder. His breath whistled in and out but all he could hear was the crashing of his blood in his ears. His thoughts were all focused in one tight spot. He ran faster.
The doors had been blasted off the wall, and as Obi-Wan raced into the Healer's wing, his eyes threw themselves wildly around the room, feeling sickened anew at the sights of all the dead and mutilated bodies lying in their beds. Injured, helpless Knights, Padawans, initiates, and crèchelings, killed as they lay healing. Obi-Wan's throat wouldn't work as he tried to call out, desperate for a response, pleading with the Force for a life spared. He was almost thrown off his feet when his powerful search found a faint spark of life. Spinning, he located the source of the living Force-signature lying facedown at the foot of a bed containing a dismembered initiate.
Obi-Wan dropped to his knees beside the figure, his heart pounding nearly out of his chest as he gently took the shoulders of the still form and turned them, laying the body across his lap. Two large, amber eyes blinked slowly up at him.
"Bant."
The words came out in a barely audible whisper, but her eyes slowly focused on him, recognition filtering in with the ghost of a smile.
"Obi," she whispered, her voice a croak. "You…alive." The tears could not be stopped now, and he could only nod as they came pouring down his cheeks in hot, unstoppable torrents. His arms wrapped around her shoulders, holding her up and supporting her so that she could breathe easier, but one look told him she was not going to breathe much longer. Her webbed fingers, so talented at healing and comforting, were missing. With a sickening twist of his stomach, Obi-Wan saw them lying a few feet away under one of the beds, still gripping half of a lightsabre. There were at least four blaster wounds in her chest, leaving a charred, bloody mess that was further mutilated by a long, straight slash across the bottom of her torso. Waves of nausea fought with waves of fury in Obi-Wan; whoever had done this had not been content just to kill her; they'd tortured her and ganged up on her. Looking into her eyes and reading the thoughts she was too weak to shield, he saw the whole horrible scene replayed in her mind.
Bant had been tending to sick and wounded Jedi in the Healer's wing when the first jolts of shock and terror had announced the attack on the Temple. In the confusion, Bant made an executive decision to evacuate as many of the wounded as she could, moving them to the hospital ship docked behind the Healer's wing. The Bendu-san, served as an emergency aid station when Jedi were in the field and would not survive the trip back to the Temple. During the Clone Wars, it spent most of its time floating around the Outer Rim Territories where the fighting was fiercest, and many Jedi were stationed in charge of Clone battalions. The Bendu-san had only just returned to the Temple for some maintenance and repairs. Now Bant assigned as many healers as she could find to evacuate the wounded before the battle reached the Healer's wing.
Unfortunately, the clone troops moved far more quickly than she had anticipated, and the battle was on their doorstep before more than a very few of the patients had been transferred. When the clones had burst in and begun shooting patients where they lay, Bant had snatched up a lightsabre from the dead hand of its owner and begun defending her patients, blocking blaster bolts and slashing at the oncoming clones. Obi-Wan could see and feel the tears in her eyes as she screamed furious words and howled as patient after patient was struck despite her efforts. Then, everything had ended as a suffocating darkness flooded the room.
A tall, cloaked figure had entered, pushing the clones aside like toys and grabbing the breath from her lungs. From beneath the oversized hood, Bant saw two yellow eyes glaring at her. A gloved hand appeared, holding a lightsabre. The blue blade ignited, and faster than Obi-Wan could track, it swung across, slicing through the blade Bant held, along with her fingers. She screamed in pain as the two halves of the hilt flew away and her hands began to spurt blood. The cloaked figure came towards her, pinning her with his horrible eyes. An outstretched palm sent a Force-shove at her that threw her halfway across the room, where she smashed back first into the wall. As she bent forward, gasping for breath and trying to stop the bleeding from her severed fingers, she heard the owner of the yellow eyes give the command for the clones to kill her. Four of them fired on her at the same time, but she could not move to flee or defend herself. She was pinned to the wall with an invisible hand, and with a gesture from the yellow-eyed man, she felt a flash of lightning cut across her stomach like fire, and then blood was spilling down the front of her smock. The invisible hand held her up a moment longer, gasping for air. Then, as she finally sank to the floor, she heard the last command.
"Kill them all. No one is to be left alive." The sounds of blaster fire filled the room but did not cover the rustle of fabric as the yellow-eyed demon knelt beside her. Bant felt his hand lifting her head, forcing her to meet his eyes. In the shadows of the hood, his features were vague and blurry, but there was a distant familiarity that she could not place. Through a fog of pain, she heard his voice whisper in her ear.
"When he comes," the voice hissed maliciously, "tell him. Don't forget now, Healer. Tell him." Then her head was released and she flopped to the floor again, struggling to cool the fire ripping through her body. An eternity later, the blasters were silent, and she distantly heard an echo of more running feet, blasters, lightsabres, and that voice. "Send a squad out to the landing pad behind the Healer's wing. You'll find a hospital ship there with more Jedi on board. Destroy it." Bant tried to cry out in protest, but the fire blazing in her lungs cut off her words and she could only lay on the floor and weep as she felt the lives of her patients snuffed out mercilessly.
Obi-Wan's tears had stopped by the time Bant's memory faded into the blackness of unconsciousness. He held Bant close, using the Force to aid her labored breathing, then bent down to put his lips near her ear.
"Tell me what, Bant? What did he want you to tell me?" Her eyes were cloudy and she shook her head fractionally.
"Don't…know. Just said…tell him." Obi-Wan bit back a cry of frustration. He didn't know how he knew the yellow-eyed demon meant for Bant to tell him something, but he did know he was the one meant.
"Who was it? Could you tell who it was? Did he say why?" Her eyes closed, then opened slowly.
"No…just said tell him," she whispered. Her breath hitched, and she gasped, struggling for air. Obi-Wan lifted her up higher in his arms, feeding energy and strength to her lungs through the Force. He could feel her exhaustion through the Force; she was drained from days of trying to heal herself and anyone else she could sense still clinging to life. The demon had meant for her to live long enough to pass on her message, but it had taxed her to the last ounce of her strength.
"Bant, hold on! Don't let go, I'll help you, it'll be all right, just hold on!" Bant struggled, choking on the fluid that had built up in her lungs from days of internal bleeding. Obi-Wan held her tighter, frantically feeding the Force into her dying body.
"Obi, no," she gasped, pushing weakly against him. "Too late. Let me…go." The tears were flooding his face again, blurring his vision and burning his eyes.
"No, Bant, not you too," he begged, his voice breaking. "Please don't go. Stay with me, don't leave me!" She raised her eyes to his, amber and sea-change, her entire frame shuddering with the effort of breathing.
"The Force…loves you," she whispered, locking her eyes on his even as they glassed over. "So do…I. May the Force…be with…you." Her voice faded away to nothing, and the light slowly left her eyes. Obi-Wan shook with crushing sobs, his chest heaving.
"Don't leave me," he pleaded softly, pressing his forehead to hers. "Don't leave me alone." But she did not answer, and he gasped out a dry, barking cry. He looked down into her face, so gentle and still, and suddenly all the grief and pain of the last horrible days exploded from his lungs in a wordless scream of agony.
Halfway across the Temple, Yoda's pointed green ears lifted at the echo of a cry of pain from the direction of the Healer's wing. The full-throated howl sounded like it had been ripped from a heart that had simply imploded under a lifetime of pressure compressed into a single moment. The tiny master's ears drooped and he seemed to grow even older as he felt Obi-Wan's pain crash over him like a tidal wave. Eventually, every creature reaches its limit…and it seemed Obi-Wan had been pushed over his edge. With a deep sigh, Yoda began to make his slow, painful way towards the source of the cry.
When he reached the Healer's wing, Obi-Wan was still sitting on the floor, cradling Bant's body. The younger Master's face was drained and slack, his eyes closed to stem the flow of salty tears still trickling past his eyelids. It was a heartbreaking scene, amidst the horror of the massacre that had taken place in this place of healing. Yoda voiced another deeply felt sigh, and Obi-Wan slowly opened his eyes.
The wells of sadness that looked out at Yoda were so deep that it seemed impossible to believe that not long ago, they'd sparkled with laughter as the Jedi General joked with his clone commander. Obi-Wan gazed at Yoda with no expression on his face, except for the bottomless grief in those incredible sea-change eyes. The small green Master gazed back with eyes that held no less pain, built over centuries of existence in an increasingly corrupt galaxy.
"A tragedy, this is," he said sadly. "Understand, we must, what has happened here. To the security center, we must go." Obi-Wan continued to gaze at the Master without expression. "Come, Obi-Wan," Yoda said in a gentle voice. "To rest, she will be laid, with the others. They are one now, with the Force, but more we must learn, of their attackers." Obi-Wan continued to stare blankly at Yoda for another long moment, before finally closing his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, he looked down at Bant, lying peacefully in his arms. Yoda watched as the younger Jedi gently shifted the Healer in his arms and rose slowly to his feet. Bant's head lay on Obi-Wan's shoulder, looking for all the worlds like an overtired child who had fallen asleep on her brother's shoulder. Obi-Wan carried her silently out of the room, stepping around Yoda as if the Master wasn't even there. Yoda followed Obi-Wan's slow footsteps down the corridors and into still another silent room.
The Room of a Thousand Fountains looked relatively peaceful compared with the slaughterhouse of the rest of the Temple. There were no bodies, and little pointless destruction. The room was still beautiful, and there was a feeling of calm there. The fountains flowed quietly, murmuring in gentle voices. Obi-Wan carried Bant silently to the foot of the largest fountain and laid her very gently down on the sand beside the pool. Kneeling beside her, he bowed his head and closed his eyes for a moment. Yoda watched through sad eyes as the young Master picked her up again and turned to face the pool.
Obi-Wan waded slowly into the pool, not even noticing as the water soaked through his boots and pants. He carried her out to the edge of the sandy shelf, stopping just short of where the bottom dropped out and the pool became too deep to stand in. The water reached the middle of his chest, and Bant was floating as much as he was carrying her. Obi-Wan paused, gazing down into her peaceful face, then lowered his head to press his lips softly to her high forehead. He whispered something into her ear that Yoda could not hear, then gently released her into the water. For a moment, she floated serenely, her arms lifting naturally to her sides as if she were merely resting on the top of the water. Then, slowly, her body sank beneath the surface and Obi-Wan watched her disappear into the depths.
Obi-Wan turned his head, looking sideways at Yoda from the water. The tears were all gone, and the blank stare had been replaced by one of weary resignation. Obi-Wan turned and began wading back to shore, splashing water in front of him as he neared the edge. He dripped all the way over to where Yoda stood respectfully waiting. The ginger-haired Jedi looked down at the puddle of water that was rapidly forming under Yoda's feet and passed one hand across the front of his robes, calling the water out of the fabric. The dripping stopped, and Obi-Wan stood completely dry.
He met Yoda's thoughtful gaze, down at the level of his knees.
"Let's go."