A Single Thread
Part I: A New Hope
Act VI
A lightsaber was more than just an elegant weapon.
It was an extension of its wielder, a physical connection between the swordsman and the Force, flowing like wind and moving as smooth as water when in the hands of one who could touch the Force.
To one who carried a lightsaber, the weapon was their life.
That was one of the first lessons that he had ever learned as a child being introduced into the Jedi world, and he had heard it repeated often over the years of his youth, usually with exasperation and a touch of impatience. Though he had long since turned his back on the ways of the Jedi, he had never forgotten that.
Some lessons, he conceded, were hard to unlearn.
Blades crashed together, crimson red against sky blue, with enough force that both opponents felt the impact down through their hands and into their bones.
Or what was in the place of bones, Darth Vader mused bitterly.
He pressed forward determinedly, with quick and prodding strikes, tentatively driving his former Master back so that Obi-Wan had to spin to block.
The old Jedi slid his blade along Vader's, searching for an opening, but Vader knocked their blades into a downward tangle, then jerked his lightsaber up swiftly, only to crash into Obi-Wan's. Putting his weight and strength into the cross, Vader pushed against the blades, overpowering the weaker man.
Rather than be struck down, Obi-Wan danced out of his reach, and Vader's lightsaber slash spliced a control panel on the wall, showering the corridor with smoke and sparks.
Obi-Wan was still quite agile for an old man.
The two men eyed each other narrowly, lightsabers bobbing lightly as they moved on their toes, each awaiting a strike from the other.
"Your powers are weak, old man," Vader sneered.
"You can't win, Darth," Obi-Wan replied in the silky voice that once veiled frustration with a wayward student. He was as calm and emotionless as ever, and Vader hated him for it. "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."
The old man swung left and then back right to parry the strike of Vader's blade.
They continued to parry and thrust, striking with meticulous, calculated blows, willing to let whole seconds pass without movement from either of them. This was not like the last battle they had fought, that had been a fight of anger and hate, emotional and raging, wounds fresh and raw.
Eighteen years later, they were both changed men.
Vader did not hate the man before him any longer, he had long since moved past such pettiness. Obi-Wan was the last real tie to the boy that Vader had left behind in the molten fire, and for that reason, more than because of any decree by the Emperor, he would be eliminated.
And then Vader would finally be free of the lingering ghosts that had not left him in all these years.
"You should not have come back," Vader said flatly, and struck, forcing Obi-Wan to block two quick and sharp slashes of his lightsaber.
Their pace quickened with faster, elegant fencing strokes.
There was no flamboyance in their moves, no aggressive outbursts of violence or power like the last time they had clashed, just controlled and disciplined prowess. Obi-Wan was an accomplished swordsmen, he had once been considered one of the best in the Order, but Vader had learned much from him in their years together, and he knew how to anticipate what Obi-Wan do next.
After all, it had been none other than Obi-Wan Kenobi who taught him to wield a lightsaber in the first place.
Perhaps you taught me too well, Obi-Wan, Vader thought to himself with a mirthless chuckle. But that was the way it was, in the end, apprentice surpassed the Master, and then the apprentice became the Master.
Soon enough, Vader would surpass and replace a second Master, as well.
Obi-Wan disengaged his blade from the dangerous tangle, stepping back, and Vader moved in, his lightsaber prodding the old man back as they drifted closer to the open doorway of the hangar bay.
This had been Obi-Wan's intention all along, Vader knew, to draw the stormtroopers guarding the Corellian freighter to them, so that his friends could sneak onto the ship with Leia and get safely away from the Death Star while Obi-Wan sacrificed himself.
Fortunately for Obi-Wan, this suited Vader's purposes, as well.
Soon Leia would be safe, even if that meant she would be far away from Vader. As long as his daughter was alive, then everything else was unimportant.
Now directly in front of the opening to the hangar, both Vader and Obi-Wan, as if acting on some silent cue that they alone could hear, began to intensify their duel. Small steps became lunges and simple strikes dramatic stabs, quickly drawing the attention of the stormtroopers within the hangar as the sound of their blades clashing filled the air.
A dozen pairs of footsteps clanked across the durasteel floor as the stormtroopers rushed toward the dueling figures, and Vader detected a flicker of Leia's awareness close by.
She was just outside of the hangar, he could sense her.
It was time to bring this to a close, and be done with Obi-Wan once and for all.
But first, there was one last detail that needed to be put to use, one last little blow to strike before he sent his former Master to become one with the Force.
"Your failure is complete, Obi-Wan," the Sith Lord pronounced, and behind the mask his scarred lips curved up into a cold, broad smile. "Did you really think that you could hide my own child from me and I would not know?"
To his satisfaction, Obi-Wan faltered, and for a fleeting moment there was genuine alarm on the old man's face, but it passed quickly, his serene calm returning, acting as a mask to conceal his inner workings. "I had hoped that I could, yes," Obi-Wan replied smoothly, parrying Vader's strike. "A pity it didn't work out that way."
"For you, perhaps," Vader retorted, crashing his lightsaber against Obi-Wan's. "Your lack of judgment ensured that my daughter would be returned to me."
A strange flicker touched Obi-Wan's eyes, but he could not define what it meant, even as it faded, replaced with a shrewd, speculative gleam. "You knew I was on Tatooine all along," he said evenly, and it wasn't a question, but a realization. "Bail told Leia where to find me in case she ever needed my help. Why didn't you ever come for me, then?"
"I would have thought you'd be pleased to find I have finally mastered the art of patience," Vader sneered, twisting his wrists and cutting his red blade down to slash at the older man's side. "You were not, and never have been, of any threat or consequence to me, Obi-Wan, you were unimportant. And so I simply bided my time, waiting for the Force to bring you to me for execution."
Obi-Wan stared at him in silence over their crossed blades, blue-gray eyes dim with oppressive things, regrets and sadness clearly visible at the forefront.
But he did not look defeated, as Vader had expected him to.
"You still have much to learn," Obi-Wan declared quietly.
As he lunged forward with a swift slash of his lightsaber, Vader sensed Leia bursting into the hangar beyond, felt her relief that she was almost away from the Death Star, felt her anxiety when she caught sight of the duel taking place, and for a moment he thought she would rush towards him.
She didn't, but neither did she rush to board the rickety ship, either.
Obi-Wan looked away towards Leia and her rescuers, something indefinable stirring within him, and then he turned back to Vader, a tiny, enigmatic smile flitting across his face.
Vader remembered that infuriating smile all too well, it was the smile of a sneaky Master who knew something that his Padawan didn't, and he growled internally, grateful that in a moment he would never have to see it again for all the days of his life.
As if listening to Vader's own thoughts and desires, Obi-Wan lifted his lightsaber in front of his face, the blue glow illuminating the sad twinkle in those blue-gray eyes, catching a glimmer of some wetness there, and Vader did not hesitate.
Slashing his blade around hard, he cut his former Master in two.
For a haunting moment, he heard Obi-Wan's weary laughter in his mind, and then the robes crumpled lifelessly to the floor, empty save for the extinguished hilt of a familiar lightsaber.
Distantly, he was aware of someone shouting, and of blasters opening fire.
Still, he did not look away from the empty robes on the floor before him, where only moments ago Obi-Wan Kenobi had been standing.
Taking a step closer, Vader purposefully prodded the crumpled robes with his booted foot, half-expecting Obi-Wan to jump out of them, but of course there was nothing there.
Master? Vader thought before he could catch himself, and he was disgusted by how small and frightened the voice within him sounded, like a nine year-old Padawan who'd gotten separated from his guardian on some strange world.
There was no answer, regardless.
Obi-Wan Kenobi was gone.
Father? Leia's anxious cry filled his head.
The sound of her mental voice was enough to shake him out of his reverie, and Vader turned towards the hangar bay, starting forward even as the doors began to iris closed.
Someone had managed to hit the control panel.
Go, Vader told his daughter shortly, and could not explain the strain in his voice. While you still can.
He both saw and felt Leia hesitate on the ramp leading into the battered Corellian ship, and Force-enhanced hearing heard her call out to whoever was still firing at the stormtroopers.
"Luke!"
As the boy turned and ran for the ship, Vader caught sight of a flash of golden hair running towards the ship, just before the doors completely sealed shut, cutting him off from the hangar beyond.
Turning back to the robes piled on the floor, the only evidence that Obi-Wan had ever been there, Vader stared down at the lightsaber nestled on top of those robes for a long moment.
Then he moved forward, calling the familiar silver hilt of Obi-Wan's lightsaber hands with the Force, and he ran his gloved hand over the grooves and notches of the elegant weapon. It was rusty and bore scars that had not been there the last time that Vader had seen it, but he knew it instinctively, knew its very essence.
How many times had he seen this weapon used, flashing and dancing in combat? How many times had it appeared at the last second to even the odds in his favor? He had even wielded it on occasion as a boy before he'd built his own on Illum, had carried it at his side for several weeks after the nightmarish events of Jabiim when it was believed that Obi-Wan had perished.
For a long moment, Vader stared down at the robes crumpled on the floor, though he could not say what held his attention.
"Sir?"
Strange that he had not detected the stormtrooper's approach.
"Dispose of these," Vader ordered, gesturing to the tattered old cloth on the floor with the toe of his boot. "I want them destroyed and removed from my sight."
"Yes, sir," the stormtrooper replied with a curt nod.
It wasn't until he had already turned and began to stride down the corridor that Vader realized he was still holding Obi-Wan's lightsaber.
Pausing, he glanced back to find that the stormtrooper had already gathered up the robes and departed to follow out his orders, and Vader stared down at the lightsaber with a frown. It did not feel heavy, as he had expected it would, but rather it felt inexplicably natural and warm in his hands
Keep it, a voice told him, one that did not strike him as his own. It belongs to you now.
In a different life, perhaps, it would have. That was the Jedi custom, after all, for the Master's weapon to be passed down to the apprentice in the event of the Master's death so that a piece of the Master would always be with his beloved student, but he was not a Jedi any longer.
At times it was hard to believe he ever had been.
Keep it, the voice urged smoothly, with a hint of wryness. As a trophy.
A trophy.
Yes, he could keep it as trophy, a simple monument to all that he had become, to his greatest triumph. Obi-Wan Kenobi, the only Jedi who he had never defeated, the only man who had the ability to hurt him, was dead, at his hand, after all these long years of waiting.
It would be fitting to keep a trophy in commemoration of that.
Clipping the weapon to his belt, beside his own lightsaber's black and silver hilt, Darth Vader started down the corridor once more, in the direction of Tarkin's office.
Obi-Wan was dead, the last remnant of the Jedi Order had been wiped out, and Leia had escaped safely to lead them to the Rebel base. It was only a matter of time now, before the next stage of his plans came to pass, and once it did, he and Leia would be one step closer to disposing of the Emperor.
Today had been a highly productive day indeed.