On The Plains of Hell
Steam billowed from the scorched earth.
It rose in spiraling plumes, drifting upward to the dark, ominous sky.
The flaming heat burned the landscape from within, like a furnace that could not be extinguished. Settled on top of the scalding earth, the hot dirt, ash and clay crumbled and cracked apart, fluttering in the air like red-hot embers.
Sidious had called this place Mufustar.
Its true name was hell.
As he emerged from the enormous cliff-side industrial facility that had served as headquarters to the commerce baron war chiefs, Obi-Wan Kenobi found himself frozen in place.
Through the shimmering veil of the sizzling atmosphere, he could make out blackened outcroppings eroded by the torrid heat in the distance, with intricate veins of molten lava running across the rocky terrain of the scorched wasteland. Jagged obsidian mountains with towering fountains of fire assaulted the landscape, and bursts of lava could be seen erupting from beneath the surface on the horizon, lighting the dark skies with an eerie glow.
He had been to many disconcerting worlds in his lifetime, but never a world that touched him this profoundly, that had filled his soul with such cold dread.
The Force whispered things of nightmares in his ear.
I can go no further, Obi-Wan thought in despair. I cannot do this...
But how could he turn back now?
The Temple was in ruins, Master Yoda had been slain by Sidious, the younglings had been slaughtered.
And their murderer still walked free.
Their betrayer.
Oh, Anakin, Obi-Wan's soul moaned. Anakin, Anakin... how could you? My Padawan, my son, my brother... how could you have done this?
Why hadn't he been able to save him?
A blast of hot wind hit his face and he winced, drawn back from his reverie.
"Obi-Wan?"
Closing his eyes, Obi-Wan drew a deep, shaky breath, letting the Force gently seep into him, but even its soothing waves could not steady his trembling spirit. He pulled himself inward, leaning into the Force for support, and took a moment to gain his composure.
Then he opened his eyes and looked over at A'Sharad Hett.
"If you wish to wait here..." A'Sharad offered, and beneath the tattoos etched on his face, symbols of his Tusken people, there was something akin to sympathy. "If you're not ready for this..."
How strange to see A'Sharad unmasked, here and now.
It had been Anakin that persuaded the Tusken Jedi to remove his mask in the first place.
The others were waiting, watching him closely, he could feel their eyes on him. Accusing, bitter, pitying or unforgiving, he had come to know all those stares intimately in the past few days, ever since the discovery of just who had betrayed the Jedi to the Sith.
"No," Obi-Wan said quietly. "I will never be ready for this, but this is my duty."
"Duty," an angry fourteen year-old's hurt words drifted to the surface of his mind from the recess of memory. "That's all that ever matters to you, isn't it? What about people? What about me!"
He had never been what the boy needed, he had never been enough.
"Good," Pablo-Jill said coolly. "Then what are we waiting for?"
A'Sharad gave their companion a sharp look, which Pablo-Jill met with an unwavering stare, and Aayla Secura looked away, but the rest pointedly ignored the situation. They might have felt sympathy for him in light of what was about to come, but they could not bring themselves to console him.
To console the one who had trained, and failed, the Jedi turned Sith.
Darth Vader.
"After you," Pablo-Jill said with a mocking bow. "Master Kenobi."
Obi-Wan pretended not to see the sneer.
Instead, he began to walk across the durasteel bridge that would lead them across the sea of fire to the blackened hills sprawling out across the rugged landscape. A force field was in place to shield the facility from the elements, but Obi-Wan could feel the smoldering heat rolling off of the lava below in shimmering waves, each brush of air ripping at his cheeks like vibroblades.
He tried not to think of what was waiting on the other side.
Inevitably, though, his mind betrayed him, and the memory of the Temple security feeds surfaced, taunting him, each vivid detail a killing blow.
The image of his beloved Padawan slaying younglings would haunt him all the days of his life.
Even more than the sight of Yoda- venerable, wise, gentle Yoda- laying in a crumpled heap on the floor of the Council Chambers.
There had been twenty-nine of them that survived the attacks in the field.
Yoda had been the first to return, and Obi-Wan knew every Jedi survivor was blaming themselves for not reaching Coruscant sooner, for not being there when Yoda was ambushed by Sidious- the snake Palpatine- upon returning to the Temple in order to shut off the recall beacon.
It was of little consolation that Palpatine's body had been found only feet away.
Betrayed, just as the Jedi had been.
Anakin fancied himself to be Emperor, it would seem.
Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, Padawan? Obi-Wan wondered, his heart aching with betrayal and a profound lack of understanding.
The Temple security feeds had been cut shortly after bearing witness to Yoda's death at the hands of the man who had manipulated them all for decades, but not before revealing Palpatine's last mission for Anakin, to dispatch the Separatists on Mufustar.
Sometime after disabling the holorecorder, but before departing Coruscant, Anakin had murdered his newly acquired Sith master.
And now they had come to this world of fire for one clear purpose.
To dispose of the murderer of both Jedi and Sith.
So now we are to avenge Palpatine's death, as well? Obi-Wan thought in numb disgust.
Funny, he seemed to recall that a Jedi was not supposed to know vengeance.
"He's close," Aayla announced softly.
Yes, he was close.
Obi-Wan could feel him out there in the distance, but it was not the same sense of Anakin he'd come to know over their years together. This presence was not vibrant and pulsating with strength, it was dull, muted, nearly blank as if wrapped behind impenetrable shields.
"Do you think he knows we're here?" Stass Allie questioned grimly.
"He knows," Obi-Wan whispered.
And in that moment, he knew that he spoke the truth.
Anakin had been expecting them, and their arrival on Mufustar had not gone unnoticed. The boy could sense them, even now, drawing closer on his location, and yet there was no reaction.
He was waiting for them.
No, he realized with his heart sinking to new depths. Not waiting for them, but for him.
"There," A'Sharad spoke.
In the distance, the silhouette of a cloaked figure knelt on the blackened outcropping at the bank of a lava flow, barely lit by the frightening glow from the section of the molten river veining out in all directions as it wound its way across the dark landscape.
The hairs on the back of Obi-Wan's neck bristled, his soul stirred in recognition.
His heart wept, and it was all he could do not to turn and flee.
I cannot do this, he whispered brokenly to himself. I cannot face him like this, I cannot do what I know I must...
Yet he could not go, he could not leave it to the others, to Pablo-Jill's bloodthirsty hunger for vengeance. He had to be a part of this, had to be there to confront what Anakin had become, to do what was necessary.
"Serenity is the way of the Jedi," Aayla murmured, seemingly to him alone.
Obi-Wan glanced at her and saw a suspicious shimmer to her eyes. She had always been fond of Anakin, they had shared a love for mechanical tinkering, and the Clone Wars had given her many an opportunity to fight alongside the younger Jedi.
The sadness in her eyes was sincere.
She would feel regret after this day, but it would be a bittersweet kind of remorse.
Aayla knew what had to be done, and she was prepared to do it. She had seen the bodies of the younglings in the Temple, she'd felt her old Master Quinlan Vos perish when his clonetroopers turned against him.
The Sith had to be destroyed, and Anakin had chosen that mantle willingly.
Palpatine had manipulated the boy, poured poison into his mind like drips of water over the years, but he had not forced Anakin to denounce the Jedi. He had not held a lightsaber to the boy's throat and ordered him into it, and even if that had been the case, Anakin should have died rather than betray the light.
Better that, than this.
They found him kneeling motionless in the broiling black sand when they approached, back to them and gazing out at the river of molten fire in front of him as if he could not bring himself to look away.
Wisps of smoke wafted from the scorched knees of his leggings.
"I knew you would come."
The hoarse whisper was so faint that Obi-Wan had to strain to hear it, and the sound of Anakin's voice was now like a vibroblade to his heart.
"Anakin Skywalker," Pablo-Jill announced coldly, igniting his lightsaber. "We are here to apprehend you for treason against the Jedi Order and the Republic, for crimes against the Force, and the murder of seventy-six Jedi."
Seventy-six... including the younglings.
Was the number truly that high?
"If you will not be taken alive," Pablo-Jill continued in a hard tone. "Then we will destroy you."
Taken alive?
Obi-Wan scoffed bitterly, they all knew there would be no "taking alive".
And Anakin must have known it, too, for he ignored him.
"I saw it all," his former Padawan laughed, voice breaking with madness. "I saw it, and her, and you... nothing has happened the way it was supposed to."
Obi-Wan had no idea what Anakin was talking about, and his former Padawan sat perfectly still facing away from him, his presence a tangled mess of deranged chaos in the Force. Finding his voice somehow, Obi-Wan ventured in a quiet voice, "How was it supposed to happen?"
The question received no answer, and he was not entirely certain that Anakin had even heard him.
"You should have left me to die in the desert," Anakin pronounced flatly.
A frown marred Obi-Wan's face, he could not recall a time when he had saved Anakin from the desert, not during the boy's apprenticeship or in the long years of the Clone Wars.
"I should have died on Tatooine."
They had only ever been together on Tatooine once, a lifetime ago, when Anakin first came into his life as an eager, turbulent little nine year-old slave who'd just won his own freedom with the help of Qui-Gon's sly cleverness.
This was not at all what he had expected from a confrontation with his wayward former apprentice, and yet the Force sensed no deception in the boy.
What Obi-Wan had assumed to be efficient shielding before was, in fact, a desolate sense of emptiness. Anakin wasn't shielding himself, he had nothing to hide, nothing to conceal, because he was barren inside.
His soul barred, for all the galaxy to see.
"Qui-Gon should have left me for the rancors," Anakin said in an eerie whisper. "It would have been better that way..."
His despair cried out to Obi-Wan, striking a dormant chord within him.
And suddenly, like water flowing over him, confusion melted into profound and tragic understanding.
The man who knelt before him was no Sith.
Not any longer.
"Anakin," Obi-Wan breathed his name, and the boy finally moved, shifting his weight.
The familiar snap-hiss of lightsabers igniting behind him filled Obi-Wan's ears the moment Anakin moved, but he paid no attention to his companions as they followed Pablo-Jill's lead by bringing their weapons up to bear in case of an attack.
An unnecessary precaution.
Slowly, moving as if his body ached, Anakin rose to his feet and turned to face them.
Golden locks were matted against one side of his face where blood from a gash on his cheek had plastered the hair to his skin, and that tanned face was stained with ash and dirt, but Obi-Wan barely noticed his disarray.
All he saw was the anguish in his Padawan's stormy blue eyes.
"You've slain Sidious," Obi-Wan said evenly, gazing at this broken man he'd once known so well. "The Sith line has been destroyed."
It was an observation, not a question, but Anakin nodded sullenly.
Things were beginning to make sense now, at last, though it did little to ease Obi-Wan's sense of unsteadiness. Anakin had not murdered Palpatine in order to take his place as Emperor, he'd turned on more than just his Sith Master, but the dark side itself.
There was only one thing that he didn't understand.
"Why?" he had to ask.
Anakin did not look at him, refused to meet his gaze, but Obi-Wan felt the shame pressing in on his friend, the self-loathing and grief that threatened to choke him.
"I killed Padmé," Anakin confessed in a desolate whisper.
Obi-Wan's breath caught in his throat violently.
Whatever he'd expected to hear, that had been the farthest thing from his mind.
Padmé was dead?
It seemed impossible, but not as impossible as the thought that Anakin, who had adored her from the moment he first laid eyes on her as a boy, had been the one to steal her life away from her.
"I saw her die in my dreams," Anakin choked out hoarsely. "He said he could save her, that he was the only one who could save her... but I killed her. I didn't mean to, I went to see her after... the Temple... and we argued. I was angry... but I didn't mean to... it just happened..."
Swallowing past the lump that had risen in his throat, Obi-Wan asked softly, voice trembling, "What happened, Anakin?"
"I hurt her," he whimpered, looking down at his hands as if they were monstrous in their own right. "I hurt her and she stopped breathing. I tried to save her, but I... I wasn't strong enough... I took her to the Temple, to Palpatine, but he didn't... he said it was for the best... that it was my fault... that I'd killed my wife and children..."
Pain tore through Obi-Wan's chest at that revelation, but this new betrayal merely stung next to the terrible grief in his heart.
Behind him, the other Jedi were in shock, and not even Pablo-Jill could seem to find a response.
"She was pregnant?" Obi-Wan whispered.
"Twins," Anakin replied in devastation, voice breaking. "A boy and a girl... Luke and Leia... and I killed them, I killed her."
Obi-Wan's eyes fell closed for a moment, taking it all in.
His Padawan had been married, in secret, and had been expecting children... and he hadn't known.
He'd known there was some sort of relationship between Anakin and Padmé Amidala all along, of course, he'd just chosen to ignore it for the sake of his Padawan's happiness.
In a time of war and death, he'd been relieved that there was someone, at least, who could soothe Anakin's wounded soul.
Finally, he understood what had led Anakin to join Palpatine and become a Sith, betraying everything he had ever believed in. It had been desperation to save the woman he loved, to save the unborn children she carried in her womb, and it had all been for nothing.
Padmé was dead, their children with her, and Anakin was now a broken shell of a man.
It had all been a waste.
A muffled sob caught his attention, and Obi-Wan opened his eyes to see Anakin's shoulders were shaking, his body trembling as he fought to keep the unbearable agony locked inside of himself.
Moving forward without thought, Obi-Wan caught him just as Anakin's legs betrayed him.
Gently, he lowered them both to ground, ignoring the searing pain in his kneecaps from the broiling dirt beneath them, and simply held his former Padawan as the younger man broke down in his arms, half-sobs giving way to full, unbridled wailing.
"Didn't mean... can't be dead..."
Obi-Wan only caught bits and pieces of the frantic pleas being muffled into his shoulder, but he remained silent, stroking Anakin's hair tenderly, the way he used to do when the boy would awaken from a nightmare as a child.
"I'm sorry," Anakin sobbed into his shoulder, body quaking with grief and guilt and self-loathing. "I'm so sorry."
"I know you are, Padawan," Obi-Wan murmured, his own voice quivering.
He had never felt so lost, so helpless, and he knew there was nothing he could do for Anakin, nothing he could do to undo what had been done, to change things. So he merely held his boy close, rocking him slightly while Anakin cried against him, shaking fiercely as horrible retching sobs racked his body.
The others stood at a distance, watching in heavy silence, their tangled emotions a frenzied cloud over his head in the Force, full of bitterness, loathing, and, in a few, pity, for the broken young man weeping before them.
A'Sharad was watching them regretfully, Aayla had tears slipping down her cheeks.
And Tru Veld, who had once called Anakin friend during their youth, only to turn his back on him for reasons unknown to Obi-Wan, simply stared, but Obi-Wan ignored him. He ignored all of them, and just knelt with his former apprentice, and held him while he cried.
After a time, Anakin's sobs slowly began to filter away and he stilled, his shallow breathing ringing in Obi-Wan's ears.
A few moments later, Anakin lifted his head, blinking up at him with those brilliant blue eyes, which were drowning in tears that could not be contained. "I'm ready," he whispered hoarsely.
It did not need to be clarified what he was ready for.
Obi-Wan had prepared himself for what he knew he would have to do, even with the new knowledge that Anakin was no longer lost, but he nearly lost his resolve right then and there. How could he raise a hand against the child he had raised and loved, even when that boy was giving him permission?
But there was no guarantee that Anakin would not fall again, that he would not slip into despair and become the monster once more. The odds were against them.
The Force knew the truth, and it was whispering it in his ear.
This had to be done, he knew that, and so did Anakin.
His boy was telling him that it was okay, saying he understood, taking away the responsibility of having to make such a terrible decision.
But even Anakin couldn't make it hurt any less.
"If you can't do it, Kenobi," Pablo-Jill's voice rang out, quiet but unyielding. "Then step aside and I will."
There would be no pardon found here today, if Obi-Wan did not deliver the final blow, then Pablo-Jill or one of the others would, because to them a Sith was still a Sith, and Anakin was too dangerous to be left alive.
Both to the galaxy and to himself.
Swallowing hard, Obi-Wan wrapped his fingers around the cold, icy hilt of his lightsaber, which suddenly felt heavy, and he could almost hear its ominous hum echoing in his ears.
"Just one thing," his boy rasped, lip trembling as hot, burning tears seared down his face.
"Anything," Obi-Wan breathed, and he meant it.
He wasn't worried about Anakin asking him to let him live, he knew the younger man had no intention of doing any such thing, knew that his former Padawan no longer desired to continue this existence. Not now, not after all that had happened.
Not after all he had done.
But had Anakin asked, he would have spared him. Despite the bodies of his fellow Jedi scattered across the floor of every room of the Temple, despite the blood that now stained those once sacred halls and the dozens of younglings whose lives had been so violently extinguished by one they trusted and admired... if Anakin were to ask him, in this moment, for mercy, it would be his.
Even after everything, all Anakin had to do was ask, and he would watch him go.
A part of him, the part that was no Jedi but simply a father and brother, prayed that Anakin would do it, that he would forget pride and penance and justice and what was right, and simply ask.
He didn't, of course, and Obi-Wan could have wept from the horror of it all.
"Stay with me?" his boy asked instead, sounding like the vulnerable, lost and scared little child that had first been bequeathed into his care all those years ago. "Until the end?"
A lump rose up in his throat, and Obi-Wan forced himself to swallow past it. "Till the end," he agreed softly, and he felt hot liquid spilling down his face, but he could not bring himself to wipe the tears away, not when this would be the last moment he ever spent with his former Padawan.
Anakin needed to see those tears, as badly as Obi-Wan needed to shed them.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Anakin bowed his head and rested it on his former Master's shoulder, drawing his lean body against Obi-Wan's own shorter frame and wrapping his arms around his Master's neck in one final, morbid embrace.
Obi-Wan closed his eyes, pressing the hollow circle of his lightsaber's energy shaft to Anakin's side. A tempest of turmoil rose up in his chest, so wild and hot that his hand shook violently, and Anakin's own fingers found their way on top of his, to steady his hand for the task ahead.
It had to be done, and he had to be the one to do it.
He couldn't ask it of any of the others, nor could he let anyone else have this horribly intimate and haunting moment with his former Padawan. Anakin was his student, his charge, his child, and this duty could only be his.
Unbidden, the memory of seeing the younglings, cut down and helpless in the Council Chambers, swam in front of his eyes, but he knew it was not his mind that forced him to recall that moment, but rather it was Anakin's doing, giving him reason, giving him purpose.
Giving him justification.
"Always," Obi-Wan murmured huskily in Anakin's ear, a wrenched sob rising in his chest. "You are my purpose."
Gritting his teeth, he ignited his lightsaber before he could lose his resolve, felt the blade sear through muscle and flesh, smelled the vile scent of scorched flesh and burnt blood in the air even before he felt the pain slam into him across the bond he shared with his boy.
Anakin tensed, a soft grunt escaping his lips, but to his credit he never once cried out in pain. Obi-Wan felt his hands grab a fistful of his tunic, felt his chin dig into his shoulder painfully, felt the boy's shallow breath on his neck.
"Forgive me, Master," Anakin whispered, his voice a ghost of a whisper.
"I forgive you, Anakin," Obi-Wan choked out hoarsely, extinguishing his weapon and casting it aside to bring his arms up to hold his former Padawan to him as the life began to drain out of him. "I would forgive you anything."
"Love... you," Anakin rasped, slowly wilting and dying before Obi-Wan's very eyes, the brilliant light in those beautiful eyes slowly dimming and fading. "Always loved you..."
"I know," Obi-Wan assured him thickly, and watched his own tears rain down upon the boy's face. "And I have always loved you, as well. You were my son, my brother, and I will always love you, Anakin."
Anakin's lips, now turning a frightening blue, twitched faintly at that, and then his eyes fell closed for the last time.
His body went limp in Obi-Wan's arms.
The distraught Jedi Master squeezed his eyes shut, but the tears got past just the same, and he bowed his head, resting his forehead against Anakin's cool one.
Behind him, he heard soft noises and shuffling from the other Jedi, but he ignored him.
He merely sat there, in the middle of that forsaken hell, kneeling in burning ash and dirt, cradling the body of the boy that he had loved as a son. After a while, how long he could not say for his mind was far from lucid, he heard them leave one by one, until only A'Sharad remained.
The Tusken Jedi did not speak, there was nothing he could have said.
None of them could ever fully understand what this moment meant, what a painful price Obi-Wan Kenobi had been forced to pay for justice. No one else had known Anakin the way he had, none of them had never loved the boy unconditionally, had never delighted in every new feat that he mastered, no matter how small or trivial.
They had never experienced the way the boy's smile could melt even the hardest wall around his heart, never heard the joyous sound of his childhood laughter.
Never watched him hold his own in everything he did, that determined spark of fire in his blue eyes. For Obi-Wan, who had lived with, loved and cherished the young man that now laid dead in front of him as a son for the better part of his life, there weren't words that could convey or console his grief.
And so A'Sharad simply laid his hand on Obi-Wan's back, and then he, too, faded away, leaving Obi-Wan alone with the body of his former Padawan.
Obi-Wan reached a trembling hand to brush a loose strand of hair out of Anakin's face, his tears falling upon the boy in his arms. It did not look like Anakin any longer, the face was so pale now, so lifeless and still, it was hard to reconcile the sight with the once-vibrant, laughing face he remembered his friend wearing.
"You can rest now, Ani," he rasped softly, leaving his hand on Anakin's forehead.
It didn't occur to him until much later that he had never, until now, called the boy by that nickname. The name that his mother Shmi had given him, that Qui-Gon and Padme and even Jar-Jar had all used, but Obi-Wan never had.
Symbolic, he supposed, of all his failings.
Anakin looked so peaceful now, so serene. His lips were curved ever so slightly, as if in some wistful little trace of a smile. What had his last thoughts been? Of Padmé and the children?
Perhaps they were together now in the gentle current of the Force, as a family.
He would take Anakin's body back to Coruscant, and he would look for Padmé's, as well. He had not seen her in the Temple, but he had a strange feeling that if he ventured down to the suite he had once shared with his Padawan, he would find her there, laid out with great care and reverence upon Anakin's bed.
The bodies would go to Naboo, he would need to speak with Padmé's family about the arrangements they wished for her, but he would burn Anakin's body on the same funeral pyre that had held Qui-Gon's body all those years ago.
And so, Master, the prophecy is fulfilled, Obi-Wan thought sadly as he gently scooped Anakin's body into his arms.
The Sith had been destroyed, never to rise again, but the Order was now in ruins and it would take at least a generation for them to rebuild, if not more. Palpatine was dead, but so was Anakin. What was the point? What was the point of balance, if it cost them so much?
How, Master, he wondered, a sob catching in his throat. Do I go on after this?
He didn't know the answer, but he knew the answer Qui-Gon Jinn would have given him.
You live, Obi-Wan. Nothing more, nothing less. You just live.
Cradling the lifeless body of Anakin Skywalker in his arms, Obi-Wan began the trek toward the facility where the others had retreated to, where the ship was waiting, and started his long journey across the plains of hell.