Author: TemporaryUniverse
WC: 4,883 (18,893 Total)

TW: Hallucinations

Obi-Wan groaned as he turned off his alarm, rubbing his eyes at the light streaming in through the artificial window. He sat up and noticed immediately that one of his legs was spastic. They would get that way sometimes, 2-1B-95 told him it was because the motor nerves could still be triggered by signals from the intact spinal cord below the severance, and wouldn't get the signals from his brain to relax again. He propped himself up with one arm and began to massage and stretch the muscles all the way down to his stiffened toes, trying to get them to release.

The worst was when he got the spasms while he was walking, usually because he stepped wrong, or hit his foot against something. His cybernetics had a failsafe so he didn't injure himself, but he always had to stop and stretch his leg until it went away.

There was a knock at the door and he welcomed Cody in. He tried not to flinch at the proximity, hating himself for the urge. The day before had been one of the days where Sidious had Cody beat him.

"Give me a minute."

Cody waited patiently until he finally got his leg muscles to stop contracting, and then helped him into the wheelchair he kept by his bed. He preferred the actual wheels as opposed to a hoverchair, and 2-1B-95 had recommended it at first to build up strength in his torso and arms. He could complete the transfer on his own if he needed to, but having Cody there always made it easier.

He wheeled himself to the fresher and set about his morning routine. When he was done, Cody assisted him in putting on his clothes and then his prostheses, something he couldn't do by himself. He winced as the neuro-interface connected, and then carefully tested the function. They responded well and he let Cody help him to his feet.

The breakfast Cody had brought was waiting at the counter for him, and for once he had an appetite. Today was the one day of the week he got to visit Padmé.

Today was the day he was going to escape.

It had been two and a half months since he was brought back to the Temple. Two and a half months of daily torture, of communing with his Master's ghost, and of planning with Padmé.

Now they were as ready as they were going to get.

Cody and the three others of his guard escorted him through the Temple. Padmé came out of the bedroom when he entered and he waited until the door closed behind him.

"We're getting out," he told her.

"Now?"

He nodded, reaching out into the Force to track the guards. Cody was posted outside, as was Padmé's guard, but the other three were leaving, as usual. They would return when it was time to escort him back, but for now, it was just two troopers.

He waited for a few minutes, until the others were out of range, Padmé anxious beside him, and then closed his eyes and concentrated on the two eerily blank minds outside the door.

"Sleep."

There were two thuds, and he peeked his head out to check, finding both of their guards on the floor and the rest of the hallway thankfully empty.

"Get the twins," he told Padmé. While she rushed off to the bedroom, he dragged the troopers into the room. Guards missing from their posts would be suspicious, but guards slumped against the wall would be even more so. Hopefully, it would buy them a little time.

He hesitated to leave Cody there. He wanted nothing more than to bring his Commander with him, so they could figure out what happened to him and possibly bring him back to himself. But Obi-Wan couldn't carry him, he was too weak from months of torture and they needed to move fast. He needed to be able to defend them.

"I'm sorry, my dear. But I have to get Luke and Leia out. I'll come back for you."

That was, if Sidious didn't kill Cody for Obi-Wan's escape. Obi-Wan didn't want to think about it, or he would lose his resolve. But Padmé, Luke, and Leia had to come first. He hoped Cody would've understood, had he been in his right mind.

Padmé emerged with Luke and Leia strapped to her chest and back, and he handed her the other trooper's blaster, taking Cody's for himself.

"Let's go."

He checked the hall and found it empty, but there was still a bad feeling growing in his chest.

They stole through the Temple like Obi-Wan remembered trying to sneak out after dark as a Padawan. Only the stakes were much lower then. The punishment for discovery would be meditation and kitchen duty. Now, Obi-Wan didn't want to think what would happen if they were caught.

The babies stayed quiet, as though they could sense how important it was. They headed for the closest hangar, where Obi-Wan hoped they could find a ship that would get them off Coruscant. They saw not a single trooper on the way and Obi-Wan felt his bad feeling get stronger. He glanced back at Padmé and the fierce expression on her face.

He had to get her out of here.

They reached the hangar, Obi-Wan waved open the door, and they were immediately confronted with two entire squadrons of troopers. Obi-Wan swore and lifted his stolen blaster but he already knew it was hopeless. With his lightsaber he might be able to take them, but a blaster didn't afford the same protection.

More troopers filled in behind them.

"Drop the weapons," one of them ordered. "Hands in the air."

Obi-Wan tightened his grip on the blaster. He glanced around the room and found nothing useful. There was one idea in his head, but…

"Padmé," he whispered. "When I say run, run. Head for a ship and take off."

"What about you?" She whispered back, her eyes wide.

"I'll cover you."

"I said drop them!" The clone said.

"I'm not leaving you behind, Obi-Wan."

"I'll be right behind you," he lied.

"You better be."

Obi-Wan breathed in and reached for the Force.

And then his legs collapsed under him. He hit the ground with a shout, trying to get back up, but they simply weren't working.

"Obi-Wan!" Padmé cried.

The troopers moved in, stripping the blaster from his hand and hauling him upright.

"Take the Senator back to her room," Sidious said, and Obi-Wan's blood ran cold. He hadn't even sensed the Sith approach.

Padmé threw a fearful look back at him as she was led away. He tried to return a reassuring one, but he knew it probably fell short.

"Did you think you could escape, Obi-Wan?"

"I thought I had a pretty good chance, yes." Sidious flicked his fingers and Obi-Wan flinched as his cybernetics came back online. He got his feet back under him warily, but he was beginning to understand what had happened. It seemed Sidious could deactivate his legs, which… really wasn't good.

"How foolish of you. Especially considering you didn't remove your tracker."

Obi-Wan blinked, then narrowed his eyes.

"What tracker?" He asked.

"You assumed you were unmonitored?"

He'd assumed Sidious would think the guards were enough.

It was unfortunate that he could only see the trap after it had sprung. Sidious had allowed him to visit Padmé unsupervised, expected him to plan an escape so that he could try and fail. There was no getting out, not when the Sith could track him and turn off his legs on a whim. He'd never had a chance, but Sidious wanted him to think he did, wanted him to have hope so that he could crush it swiftly and totally under his heel.

Foolish, indeed.

"What happens now?"

"Now, you will regret trying to escape." The dark promise in his tone made a shiver run down Obi-Wan's spine.

"The only thing I regret is that I couldn't," he said, with more conviction than he felt.

Sidious smiled. Then he turned and began to walk away. A trooper pushed him to follow, four of them falling into step around him.

The Emperor led the way down to one of the deepest levels of the Temple. Obi-Wan didn't think he'd ever had reason to go this far down before. They came to what looked like a cell block, and the clones shoved him into one of the cells.

"Chain him." One of the troopers entered and locked a set of old-fashioned durasteel cuffs onto Obi-Wan's wrists. A sturdy chain connected them to the wall. Obi-Wan examined them for a moment then looked up at Sidious with a raised eyebrow.

"I've been thinking… about what you said," the Sith mused.

"I've said quite a lot. You'll have to be more specific," he replied, unable to stop himself from injecting as much sass as he could, just in case Sidious thought he held any respect for him.

"That you are a Jedi as long as the Force is with you. Tell me, Obi-Wan, if the Force were taken from you, what then?"

That couldn't mean anything good.

"The Force is with me always." It was a lesson taught to all Jedi, from the time they could first understand what the Force was. The Force couldn't truly be gone from someone, it was there even if they couldn't feel it.

"Tell me, do you recognize this?" He held out a wad of black fabric, one that Obi-Wan instantly knew. The blood drained from his face, his heart beating faster, thumping against his ribs. Of course. Why wouldn't this Sith have one? "Ah, I see that you do. How long did the witch have you in one of these? A month? How does two sound?"

"I'd really rather not," he said, his voice rough and catching in his throat.

"You brought this upon yourself."

Sidious approached him and he tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go. He clenched his jaw and closed his eyes as the mask slipped over his head.

The Force vanished instantly and completely, this mask much stronger than the one Ventress had used. It was like a bucket of ice water dumped on his head and he shuddered. Then the pain hit and he was driven to his knees. He jerked helplessly against the chains, trying to hold back his scream. Losing the Force always hurt, like losing a part of himself, and, well, that was pretty much what had happened. It was as though a void opened up inside him, replaced by Darkness that gnawed at his innards and dulled his senses.

The pain didn't fade, but the shock of it did, allowing him to open his eyes. For a moment, he thought he hadn't, the blackness was absolute, but then he blinked and nothing changed. Sidious was gone, he was alone, with not even a hint of light left in the room to see by. His breath seemed unnaturally loud in the emptiness.

Obi-Wan sat back against the wall, putting his legs out in front of him, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes again. When he was comfortable, he focused on deepening his breathing, counting out each inhale and exhale. Feeling calmer, he brought his chained hands up to examine the mask, discovering buckles at the back that kept it uncomfortably tight across his face. He tried to pry them open but they burned his fingertips, like the mask itself was preventing him from taking it off. He yanked his hands away with a stifled yell.

Having failed at that, he felt instead for where the chain met the wall, and found it firmly anchored in the cold stone. There was no freeing himself.

Two months.

He would have to hold onto his sanity for two months. He remembered Ventress, and how wrecked he had been after that experience. The nightmares had stayed with him through the war.

Sidious couldn't have devised a worse punishment.

He swore, already feeling his spirit sinking, doubt creeping in. What was he supposed to do? He reached for the absent Force and cried out as agony lanced through his head, his body, even his unfeeling legs. It left him trembling, his jaw clenched so hard his teeth creaked. It seemed this mask was going to be very effective in keeping him from the Force.

With nothing else to do, he lay down and closed his eyes, sinking into a Force-less meditation. He didn't even notice when he fell asleep.

When he woke up to darkness he panicked for a moment before remembering. The failed escape. The cell. The mask.

Obi-Wan sat up, eyes flicking about aimlessly, searching for any anchor in the black. His stomach felt hollow and it had nothing to do with physical hunger. He had never felt so empty and alone. He began to hum, an old tune he had learned as a Padawan. He didn't remember where he'd learned it from, but it had always brought him comfort.

The hours passed.

He got up and paced for a while, trying not to trip over feet he couldn't see. After a few minutes, the rattle of the chain as he moved started to irritate him and he stopped. He sat back down and waited.

Nothing changed. Not the darkness, not the silence, not the hole in his soul.

He returned to meditation. And then he slept once more.

A sound awakened him and he winced as light hit his strained eyes. Someone was coming toward him and he pulled himself to a sitting position, back against the wall. It was a clone trooper, with a bottle in his hand. A second one stood in the doorway.

"Cody?" He asked, hoping. He couldn't tell if it actually was, not with the blank armor and without the Force, but Cody had been his guard most of the time. The trooper didn't acknowledge him, just grabbed his hair and forced a straw into his mouth through a slit in the mask.

"Drink."

Obi-Wan refused.

"Drink or I'll make you."

He drank. The nutrient liquid tasted revolting, a bitter flavor that coated his tongue and made his mouth feel vile, but he swallowed it anyway. He didn't really want to find out what it was like for the trooper to make him do it.

When he'd drained the container, they set it aside and pulled out a vibroblade.

"Wait—" He tried to object.

They began cutting off his clothes and he tried to push them away, but they punched him in the face. His head snapped to the side, cheek throbbing, and he stopped struggling.

The clone walked out with the scraps of his clothes and the empty bottle, once again leaving him alone in the dark.

Time passed.

He was fairly sure his guards came every day to feed him and sometimes hose him down with frigid water, but with how often he slept and how long the hours felt sitting alone with nothing to focus on but his own thoughts, it could have been days between visits.

A constant headache plagued him, originating from either eyestrain, dehydration, hunger, or all of the above. The pain of missing the Force left him drained, and there was nothing he could do to ease it. It was miserable in pretty much every way, from the cold, to the quiet, and the dark. His skin itched from the filth and his braces were icy when he accidentally brushed his hand or arm against them. The chains rubbed his aching wrists raw and bloody.

He tried twice more to remove the mask, only for it to sear his fingers like a hot iron. If he touched the mask without intent to take it off, nothing happened, almost as though it knew his thoughts and endeavored to keep him imprisoned. It was supremely uncomfortable, the cloth clung to his skin and made his face tingle.

He was contemplating trying again when he heard the voice.

"Padawan."

He lifted his head and blinked at his Master sitting in a half-lotus pose in front of him. He didn't look like a ghost anymore, his features solid and untinged by blue.

"Master?" How was Qui-Gon here? If the mask blocked his connection to the Force, it would stand to reason that he wouldn't be able to see or hear a ghost that manifested itself through the Force.

"Is this really the best you can do?"

Obi-Wan pressed his lips together, a split second of hurt stabbing his chest at the harsh words and harsher tone.

"Master, I don't—" Qui-Gon cut him off.

"You've already given up. I taught you better than that," he said.

"I haven't given up," Obi-Wan protested.

Qui-Gon gave him a look and he flinched at the disappointment he could see there. He remembered that look well, even though it had been over a decade since it had last been aimed at him. During his apprenticeship, he would have done anything to avoid disappointing his Master. Disappointment meant he had failed somehow, and failure had been unacceptable. He didn't ever want to let Qui-Gon down.

"You can't lie to me, Padawan. Do you want to Fall?" Obi-Wan stared at him incredulously.

"No! Of course not, Master. And I won't," he said.

"It's inevitable. Sidious won't stop until you do. You can't resist him forever."

"I would rather die." Being a Jedi was written deep in his bones, engraved on his soul, and would be until he joined the Force.

"So stubborn. I never liked that about you." Obi-Wan recoiled, the casual way Qui-Gon said it stabbing into him like a knife. That was nothing compared to what came next. "There were times I regretted taking you on as my apprentice. You were always so difficult. Never listening. Always arguing."

"Master…" He was holding back tears, all the insecurities he'd had as a Padawan rising to the surface. How many times had he thought those same things when he was younger? How many times had he wondered if Qui-Gon really wanted him? Qui-Gon had. He knew he had because his Master had told him so. Their beginning had been shaky, but he knew Qui-Gon cared.

"I should never have trained you."

"You're not Qui-Gon." His Master was many things, but he wasn't cruel.

"What am I then?"

Obi-Wan frowned, thinking it through. If this wasn't a ghost in the Force, the other option was…

"I'm hallucinating." This was the Dark Side, trying to twist his mind. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, his Master was gone.

Qui-Gon wasn't the only hallucination. He was visited by Satine, Ahsoka, Cody, and on the bad days, Ventress. Those days he would forget when and where he was, certain he was back on Rattatak, living through her torture as she did her best to tear him apart.

On the worst days, though, it was Anakin. Anakin, standing there with hate-filled, yellow-red eyes and a burning hole through his chest, and he didn't go away, not even when Obi-Wan closed his eyes. He never said anything, just watched Obi-Wan's slow descent into madness, but he didn't need to. Obi-Wan knew his failures, they burned in his heart and had since Mustafar, and there was nothing Anakin could say that would make it hurt more.

The rest though…

They weren't so silent.

"I told you to train the boy, Obi-Wan. I put my faith in you and you failed me."

Obi-Wan kept quiet and tried to ignore him. It wasn't actually Qui-Gon. The Qui-Gon he knew, that had been appearing to him the past few months, hadn't blamed him for anything.

"I trusted you to have my back. But where were you while I was fighting Maul? Stuck behind a ray shield because you were too slow. My death was your fault, Obi-Wan, and you couldn't even give me justice. My killer still lives."

It was just a hallucination. Just the mask feeding off his own insecurities and doubts and using them against him. He closed his eyes.

Satine and Ahsoka also blamed him for their deaths.

"If you had defeated Maul in the first place, I wouldn't have died. It's your fault."

"You cast me out and then you dragged me back into the war. It's your fault."

"It's your fault."

Those three words burrowed into his mind. They latched on like parasites, draining him of every drop of his self-worth.

The only one who didn't say them was Anakin, and it began to gnaw at Obi-Wan. Somehow, out of everything, Anakin's silence would be the thing that drove him mad.

He was tired, and hungry, and in pain, and he couldn't stand Anakin's sulfuric gaze anymore.

Finally, he snapped.

"For Force's sake, just say something!"

"What do you want me to say?" Obi-Wan blinked, not expecting an answer. He glanced up at Anakin, at his crossed arms and raised eyebrow. "Do you want me to beg for forgiveness? It's not me who needs forgiveness, Master. It's you. You're the one who failed me."

"I—I know. I'm sorry. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't what you needed."

Anakin's lip curled in a sneer.

"What kind of apology is that? You weren't good enough? Of course you weren't good enough. But you never gave me a reason to trust you. A reason to think you actually cared about me beyond your obligation to Qui-Gon," he spat the name out like it was something vile.

"I loved you, Anakin. You were my brother." More than a brother. Anakin had been his other half.

"Then why did you kill me?" Obi-Wan flinched, outrage and guilt flaring up, fighting for dominance. The outrage won.

"Because you killed the rest of my family! And you did it without mercy, without hesitation. You left their bodies to rot on the Temple floor like trash. You killed children in their beds, in their home, where they're supposed to be safe. Innocents, Anakin." He needed Anakin to see, to realize what he had done, the atrocities he had committed. He needed to know why.

"The Jedi weren't your family, Obi-Wan." Anakin's eyes turned as hard as durasteel, glinting sulfur yellow. "They were a collection of arrogant, emotionless cowards who thought they were superior to the rest of the galaxy. They deserved what they got. I did the galaxy a favor."

Obi-Wan had been wrong. Anakin could make it hurt more. His breath hitched, his lips parting the slightest amount to let the pain escape in a soft, gutted noise.

"How can you say that?" He choked out hoarsely. "The Jedi gave you a home, Anakin—"

"The Jedi took me away from my home! From my mother! And then they told me to forget about her. Do you know what happened to her? Do you, Obi-Wan? She died. She died in agony on Tatooine because you ignored my visions."

"Visions? Anakin, you told me they were dreams! How was I supposed to know—" If Anakin's dreams had been visions instead, afforded by the Force, and all Obi-Wan had told him was that dreams pass in time, the advice Qui-Gon had given him when he struggled with his own nightmares, then…

That was one more way he'd failed his Padawan.

"Everything I am. Everything I became. That's all on you, Master."

"Anakin—" He didn't know what to say, only that he had to say something, anything that would end this.

"It's all your fault."

Obi-Wan broke.

"Stop. Stop, stop, stop," he sobbed. He clawed at the buckles of the mask, feeling his overgrown nails break, ignoring the burn in his fingers. "Get it off."

"You can't run from this, Obi-Wan. There's nowhere to go. You can't run from your own mind."

He covered his ears over the mask as if that would help.

"You can't run from the truth," Anakin hissed, his voice undimmed.

Obi-Wan screamed. He curled up on the filthy floor, tears soaking into the mask.

"Pathetic."

He cried until he physically couldn't anymore, and he was just sobbing with dry eyes. Anakin had vanished at some point, leaving him alone in his misery. Exhaustion eventually overtook him. When he fell asleep, he dreamed of Mustafar. Of Anakin with rage in his yellow eyes, of the feel of the saber in his hand when he stabbed it into his Fallen brother's heart.

He woke up and Anakin was there with more accusations. Now that he'd started talking, he didn't stop, spelling out Obi-Wan's failures in harsh, angry words intended to hurt. Obi-Wan shut him out, shut everything out. He just stared into the blackness, too tired and defeated to even think.

The guard came in and fed him, and he drank the nutrient liquid without protest, not even tasting it. There was no point, they would shove it down his throat whether or not he wanted it. He had tried. Once, in the very beginning. It had been… unpleasant.

The days passed in a haze of apathy. He slept and dreamt. He awakened and existed.

He didn't know how long it was. Weeks. Months. Years, even. Would Sidious leave him in here forever? What was he waiting for? Obi-Wan had broken. Surely he knew that.

Obi-Wan couldn't bring himself to care.

Maybe he would die in this cell. Maybe he wouldn't. Either way, it would have to end eventually.

Right?

The door opened and Obi-Wan turned his head and shut his eyes at the pain the light brought.

"Hello, Obi-Wan." He'd forgotten what Sidious' voice sounded like, the low snarl of it, the twists and crags that mirrored his face. "Are you ready for me to take it off?"

"Yes." His own disused voice cracked, quiet and hoarse, as he squinted up at the Sith. His vision was blurry, his eyes unable to focus after so long in the dark.

Sidious approached him, a wave of his hand unlocking the cuffs. They clinked to the ground. Obi-Wan watched listlessly, staring at his bruised and torn wrists.

An invisible pressure wrapped around his neck and pulled him up, dragging his back against the wall, he choked, his hands jerking towards his throat. The Sith stood in front of him, his yellow-red eyes burning from under the hood as he examined him. He reached out and Obi-Wan flinched, but he just undid the buckles of the mask and peeled it off.

The Sith dropped him and he fell to his hands and knees, weakened arms barely able to catch him. Obi-Wan sat back on his heels and took his first unobstructed breath in what was probably months, feeling the Force trickle back to him, as Dark as it was. He dove into himself and found the tiny spark of Light that had somehow survived, cradling it carefully as he soaked in the warmth.

Fingers brushed his jaw and he looked up at Sidious.

"Call me Master."

Obi-Wan swallowed but stayed silent. Apparently, he wasn't completely broken yet because a spark of defiance reared its head. He glanced over at Qui-Gon, who raised an eyebrow and gave him a small 'go ahead' gesture.

"C'mon, Obi-Wan," Anakin hissed in his ear. "Do it. There's no point in resisting."

He'd thought that when the mask was gone, the hallucinations would go, too. Why were they still here?

"If you are feeling stubborn, I can always put it back on," Sidious said, holding out the mask again. Fear shot through Obi-Wan.

"No, no, please don't." The Sith closed in and he fell back, his breath hitching. "Don't," he whimpered. Sidious didn't stop, kept reaching for him. "Wait. Please, Master, please don't."

"Ah, very good," Sidious purred. Obi-Wan bowed his head, defeat heavy on his shoulders. "But I'm not sure you meant it."

He pulled the mask back on.

Obi-Wan cried out. The Force vanished once more and the last bit of his resistance snapped.

"No, please, please, please, no, no."

Sidious turned and left, telling the clone guard to, "Chain him back up."

"Please," Obi-Wan sobbed, clawing at the edge of the mask as though he could peel it off, but the only thing he accomplished was scratching up his neck with his broken fingernails, his fingertips burning. "Please, take it off."

The clone grabbed his wrists, pulling them away from the mask, and locked the cuffs back on.

Anakin was laughing.

"Look at you, Obi-Wan. Pleading with the Sith. If the Jedi were still alive to see you, they'd be disgusted."

Obi-Wan let his hands fall.

Anakin was right. He was so far from being a Jedi right now that it was pitiful. It's not like it mattered, the Jedi were gone. What was the point in trying to keep their culture alive? If the Force decreed that he should be the last Jedi, then it had chosen the wrong person.

"You're a failure, Obi-Wan. That's all you ever were and all you'll ever be."

He closed his eyes and curled up on the floor, trying to shut the terrible voice out.

He wished he had died on Mustafar. No, even further back on Naboo. Qui-Gon should have lived and he should have died and it would have been better for everyone.

A.N. Hallucinations influenced by the Dark Side are no fun, aren't they.

Solitary confinement also has massive psychological and physical effects. Obi-Wan is most decidedly not okay. Things don't really get better for him from here.

See you in three days! Thanks for reading.