A/N: So I had the idea a while back to add a third part to this little duology, another oneshot that explains a few things, and decided that the original duology needed a little reworking, so I literally wrote it all out again and changed things up a little - added more detail, elaborated a bit, that sort of thing. The version you see now is the final edit. For those of you reading this for the first time: this is a weird AU thing that I came up with in which Anakin and Obi-Wan are basically immortal souls trapped in an endless cycle: they meet, they fall in love, they're torn apart by tragedy, they die, it starts again. This iteration has lasted the longest out of their many lives in the last thousand years...this will be addressed later. No major warnings for this one, there's just a lot of dialogue and a lot of confusion. Title and song lyrics are Poets of the Fall's "The Lie Eternal."
Disclaimer: Nope, anything you see that you recognize belongs to Disney, Lucasfilm, and Poets of the Fall.
The Lie Eternal
"I'm here, tonight
The passion of your life
To up the stakes...
You will be...
Like me, in time
So let me come inside
Your heart, your mind...
Hell, I dare you...
To see yourself
In a different light
Where my hungry desire...
Finds oblivion...
In your embrace...
All mistakes forgiven
In your embrace..."
He was roughly shoved to the ground, landing on his knees. A strand of his hair fell into his face from the impact, and he moved to brush it away only to find that he couldn't; his hands were in binders behind him. He had barely realized they were still on. It felt as if they'd been traveling for hours from the prison block he'd been collected from.
He allowed himself to be pushed forward by the business end of a blaster so that he lay facedown on the floor. All he could see was a pair of white armored boots, the kind the clones wore―though it looked different now. He reached into the Force, making no attempt to get up and remove himself from the humiliating position, and with a pang recognized the unique Force signatures of Boil and Cody. Of course. What kind of a sick, twisted game would this be if the very clones that had once served him so loyally weren't now the ones dragging him before their new master in chains?
"Leave us." That voice, so familiar and yet so foreign at the same time―it used to be comforting, soothing. Now it was cold, harsh, and only served to send a shiver of apprehension and fear down his spine―and to awaken a deep sadness that had been sleeping within him since the Purge.
The boots walked away, and now all he could see was the black floor, polished to gleaming so that all it served to do was reflect his own tired face back at him. He wanted to call out to Cody or Boil, to try and remind them who the enemy was, but he knew it would be no use, and for all he knew he might be dead the minute he opened his mouth. Plugged full of blaster bolts like most of the other Jedi had been, possibly, or simply strangled to death with the Force―he'd heard it had become his captor's signature way of dealing with those that failed him.
The door closed with a soft hiss, and then his captor spoke again, and Obi-Wan Kenobi was roughly yanked back into a kneeling position.
"Hello again, Master," said Darth Vader, already stepping away from Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan averted his eyes. He didn't want―he refused―to look at Vader and see the monster he'd become staring out at him from behind Anakin's face. He didn't want to have the last mental image he held of Anakin Skywalker's blue eyes looking out at him as he smiled shattered and spoiled by the sickening yellow-orange shade they were now. He didn't want to look at the man he'd loved and see only a stranger.
It was also the only act of defiance he could manage from his bound, kneeling position.
Vader allowed that for only a few minutes before he approached again and forced Obi-Wan to look at him with a black-gloved hand under his chin. Obi-Wan tried to muster a glare, and would have suceeded had his brain not immediately started analyzing the differences between Anakin's face and Vader's; he found, to his dismay, that aside from the eye color, there were none.
"Why do you look so afraid?" Vader asked, breaking the silence that had reigned as he did his own study of Obi-Wan's face. The tone of his voice was different, layered with a cold, smooth tone that belied the darkness within him. "It's just me."
"You're not him," Obi-Wan said coolly. "Not the man I love, anyway." Vader walked around him and removed the binders from his hands, freeing Obi-Wan to shake them out as he continued talking, watching Vader in his periphery until he was once more visible in front of him. "You may wear his face like a mask, but you forget that I have met the monster underneath. I do not see the resemblance."
Vader tilted his head, considering this―and him. "No, I suppose I am not your...Skywalker," he said eventually, and Obi-Wan flinched as Vader referred to Anakin as if he was a different person (he was, whispered a voice in Obi-Wan's head, he was a much different person). "However...you are lying about not seeing the resemblance. Because you do see the resemblance, Obi-Wan, don't you? And it's killing you." The yellow-orange eyes that concealed the blue they were supposed to be almost seemed to glow in what Obi-Wan realized for the first time was very dim lighting.
Obi-Wan held that poisonous gaze despite the toll it took on his heart. "If it is?"
Vader shrugged. "Soon you will come to see that I am far better than Skywalker was."
"I highly doubt that," Obi-Wan drawled, sarcasm as potent a weapon in his arsenal as ever. "Anakin had a heart. Anakin cared about people―perhaps too much at times, but it was part of what endeared him to me, part of what made him human." It pained Obi-Wan to talk about Anakin in the past tense, but that was the reality now―especially considering the man he was talking to. He eyed Vader warily. "I don't even know what you are."
A cruel smirk appeared on Vader's face, an expression that seemed out of place on Anakin's features. "I thought we had figured that out long ago, Master."
Obi-Wan glared at him. "That's not what I meant, and you damn well know it."
The smirk remained. "I see your time in the detention block has made you no less spirited...Master."
It was the condescending tone in which Vader said the word Master that made Obi-Wan get to his feet in defiance.
"It's been three months," he said pointedly. "I have been locked in that cell for three months, and never once did you come by―not that I expected you to in any case. I rather thought you were just going to kill me." His eyes narrowed as he looked at Vader, who looked nervous suddenly, holding Obi-Wan's gaze with fear in his eyes. "So why didn't you? I was a Jedi Master, a member of the Council―surely I would have been a high-profile kill? You and your Inquisitorius―oh, don't look so surprised, your storm troopers aren't nearly as tight-lipped as you might like, I heard plenty―exist solely to hunt down and execute any and all Jedi that survived the Purge. Yet here I stand―a prisoner, not a victim. So tell me, Vader, why didn't you just kill me? Why am I still standing before you in chains rather than burned to ash along with my fellow Jedi?"
Vader held his gaze for a few moments more before he turned away, averting his eyes. "You should know that answer."
"Enlighten me," Obi-Wan countered, crossing his arms and adopting his I'm-your-master-now-explain stance.
Vader's hand―his bionic one, Obi-Wan thought, though it was impossible to tell through the gloves―clenched into a fist. He looked back at Obi-Wan with a tortured expression, a duality in his eyes―Anakin, trapped and screaming beneath the fear, anger, and hatred that was Vader. "I wanted―I want―you," Vader managed, sounding as if the words were being forced out of him. "I shouldn't. You're a Jedi." He spat the word as if it was poison on his tongue. "And yet my love for you is stronger than ever..."
He sounded so much like Anakin in this moment, Obi-Wan thought―the same conflicted thoughts as had plagued him for the entirety of their secret relationship. We shouldn't be doing this. It's not the Jedi way. It's against the Code. But damnit―I love you. I love you. I love you. Now in reverse, a distorted reflection of that inner conflict. I shouldn't want this. You're a Jedi. I turned my back on the Jedi. But damnit―I love you. I love you. I love you.
Obi-Wan wished he could find the words to save Anakin, wished he could reach into the darkness and turmoil of Vader's existence and pull Anakin back from the depths, to set everything to rights―overthrow the Emperor, restore some semblance of order to a galaxy in crisis. He wished he could tell him he loved him one last time.
But even as he watched, the war in Vader's eyes came to a violent end. Any trace of Anakin was gone from his voice as he spoke again, more to himself than Obi-Wan at first. "But perhaps...perhaps there is a way I can have you, without upsetting my Master's Rule of Two."
"If you're asking me to Fall to the Dark Side for you," Obi-Wan said flatly, "the answer is no."
Vader scowled at him. "Perhaps if I show you..."
"Show me what?" Obi-Wan asked, dreading the answer.
Abruptly, Vader siezed Obi-Wan's tunic and pulled him forward, into Vader's space―too close, too close. "Yes..." Vader's stained eyes were locked on Obi-Wan's clear blue ones now, and there was a wild light―a hunger―in them, a feral instinct that set Obi-Wan's nerves on edge and his heart racing. "Yes...I can show you, and you will see...you will see..."
"Show me what?" Obi-Wan repeated, slightly annoyed, slightly afraid―he knew what was coming. He knew he had no choice in the matter; he knew he was powerless to stop Vader, not now.
"Everything," Vader promised, and kissed him.
"I'm here
I'm now
Arrived
I fell into your love
I fell into your lie eternal...!
I'm here
I'm now
Survived
I fell into your love...
I fell into your lie... (Oh...)"
The kiss was at once everything and nothing like Obi-Wan's final kiss with Anakin. It had been just before they parted ways for the final time before everything had gone wrong. Anakin had been desperate, a little distracted―I don't like the thought of you going off to face Grievous alone again, Obi-Wan, what if you don't come back?―but his kiss had been as sweet and warm as ever. There was a burning passion underlying every kiss, and that night had been no exception; but it was also warm and gentle in a way only Anakin could be, something instilled in him by his mother and by life growing up as a slave. Every emotion he'd felt for Obi-Wan was poured into that kiss, good and bad, and Obi-Wan was still surprised no one had noticed the sheer power of the Light Side that radiated from their concealed spot in an alcove behind a pillar.
Vader's kiss was every bit as passionate, and had that same desperate hint to it that Anakin's final kiss had, but the intensity of Vader's was unlike anything Obi-Wan had ever experienced. The Force surged around them, a dark tide of emotion and power―sheer power of a magnitude Obi-Wan had never felt. He sensed it when Vader opened himself up to that tide and let it in, all of his hatred and desperation and passion and conflict and pain poured into the kiss, and into Obi-Wan, through the pathways of the bond Obi-Wan had thought was severed when Anakin died. The tide of the Dark Side crashed over him in waves, drowning him in its torrents―and what frightened Obi-Wan most was the exhilaration it sent through him, and the craving for more.
The Force settled as Vader drew back, apparently reluctantly, stepping away from Obi-Wan; the sudden loss of contact, and the dizziness that had resulted from the encounter with the Dark Side, nearly made the Jedi lose his balance. Neither of them spoke for a moment, both trying to catch their breath; wordlessly Vader turned towards a couch that had previously gone unnoticed. Obi-Wan followed, more out of fear of what the Sith might do if he didn't than anything.
Obi-Wan's head was spinning. "What...was that?" he asked finally as he sat down beside Vader.
"That was merely a taste of the power the Dark Side holds," Vader panted, his yellow-orange eyes alight; he looked almost drunk. "Together, with that power at our beck and call...we could be gods, Obi-Wan."
He reached out a hand to trace a careful finger down Obi-Wan's face; Obi-Wan pulled away, giving the Sith a look that suggested he thought he was crazy. "Gods?" Obi-Wan echoed. "Vader, gods don't exist."
"Then what did the commonfolk of the galaxy call the Jedi?" Vader demanded. "They did not think of you as saviors or as peacekeepers, or even as generals. They thought of you as sorcerers, wizards, possessed of some otherworldly power―gods. We could be again―the gods of the galaxy, together, bound by love."
"That wasn't love," Obi-Wan said. "Not the way I've known it. Love―with Anakin―was gentle. It was complicated, yes, but steady, strong, pure. We had moments where we broke each other's hearts―Hardeen comes to mind―but in the end we were together in peace. That...that was violent. That was..."
"The Dark Side," Vader interrupted. "Yes. But don't you see, Obi-Wan, that was love―what love really feels like. The Jedi always taught that to feel emotion of any kind, though specifically to love, was to court darkness, to invite weakness. The Sith teach that emotion is power. Keeping that in mind, you must realize that the love you felt on the Light was still shadowed by Skywalker's untameable dark side, and by your own misgivings about disobeying the Code and the teachings of the Jedi to carry on your relationship. With me, now, if you embrace the Dark Side, there are no restrictions―and you could be so much more powerful than before, free of the corruption of the Jedi Order. We could be unstoppable."
Obi-Wan tried to make sense of that. "Vader. I told Anakin time and again―the Jedi never forbade emotion, they forbade attachments. Attachment can lead to clouded judgement, something one should never have in a life-or-death situation. Distractions and clouded judgement resulting from trying to save someone you're attached to may lead to an error that gets you or even the person you're trying to protect injured, maybe killed. And you talk as if I have agreed to become a Sith―surely you realize I will never become such a monster."
"And therein lies the hypocrisy," Vader insisted, and once more Obi-Wan found himself abruptly yanked by the tunic so that he was sitting on Vader's legs, their faces mere inches apart. "They do not forbid emotion, but they forbid any emotion that could lead to a fatal attachment or to the Dark Side―which is to say, all of them. And yet you and Anakin Skywalker defied that Code, despite how dogmatic about it you are, and fell in love, or what you called love." He paused. "And you wouldn't be a Sith. My Master would not like that. A Dark Jedi, however...the role would suit you well."
Obi-Wan was repulsed by the very idea. "What is your point?"
Vader's hand moved up to grip Obi-Wan by the chin and force him to meet his eyes―something that was largely unnecessary, as they were so close that it was hard not to meet his eyes. "My point," the Sith purred, "is that you are in no place to defend the Jedi when your own actions display defiance of their beliefs."
Obi-Wan tried again to muster a glare and again failed; he was too close now, could see too much of Anakin in Vader's features, even if there was no trace of him left in his eyes. He opened his mouth to reply, when―
"Master..."
Obi-Wan glanced over his shoulder, alarmed; it couldn't be―no one was there, and Vader hadn't spoken.
"Something wrong?" Vader asked, turning Obi-Wan's head back so he was facing the Sith again.
"I have every right to defend the Jedi," Obi-Wan replied, rather than answer. "Yes, I disobeyed the Code for Anakin, but that doesn't mean I don't believe in the ideals the Jedi perpetrated. I have been able to master my emotions in the past, and I have done it time and again to keep myself in line with the Council and the Code even if on the surface I was breaking it. You don't seem to realize that. Then again, you were never able to learn the same control over your emotions that I was."
"And yet Anakin Skywalker tried his damndest to stick to the Code in every other way―limiting himself, ignoring his potential to appease the Council," Vader sneered. "He made himself weak to appease the Council, to appease you―yet all the Jedi did was push him farther away with their hypocrisy and corruption."
Obi-Wan closed his eyes, pained. "How can you talk this way?" he asked. "You speak of yourself and the reasons you came into being, but you refer to Anakin as if you hadn't been him a thousand times over―as if you didn't begin as the conflicted Jedi you deem so weak."
Vader coaxed an unwilling Obi-Wan in for another kiss, though far lighter this time; it seemed it was more to get his attention than anything. "Because, my love," he purred. "I have accepted what you cannot: Anakin Skywalker is dead."
"You're my
Sweet trial...
All my vestiges of hope
Pin wishes upon this...
To prove I can be right...
For you and me...
This whole damn controversy
Will shift its course...
For better or for worse...
In your embrace...
All illusions broken
In your embrace..."
How many times had he heard some variation of those words over the centuries? How many times had the cycle ended this way? But it wouldn't end, no, not now, not this time―something was different this time. He could feel it in his bones―and the fact that he hadn't died yet was another indication.
Obi-Wan pulled away, trying to leave Vader's space. Vader's mechanical right hand siezed Obi-Wan's wrist.
"Where are you going?" the Sith asked, eyes glittering in the low lighting of what Obi-Wan belatedly realized must be Vader's quarters on his Star Destroyer.
"Anywhere," Obi-Wan said. "Anywhere but here. I will not do this again."
"Master..." Obi-Wan jumped; there it was again, that whisper.
"But you will," said Vader, and the knowing smirk on his face sent an involuntary shiver of apprehension down Obi-Wan's spine. "You will because you are fated to do so in every lifetime."
"Surely you've noticed something's different?" Obi-Wan countered, his nerves still prickling from the whispers.
"Different, yes," Vader admitted. His eyes gleamed their sickening yellow-orange; Obi-Wan wanted to escape their penetrating stare. "But we are both still alive. Which means you must see this through until the bitter end―just as you have every other time before."
Why is it always me? Obi-Wan thought to himself, rather despairingly. I have always been the one left behind. Why me?
"You said yourself that Anakin is dead," Obi-Wan challenged, forcing his voice to work around the lump in his throat as he said the words. "If not physically, then in spirit. Does that not conform to the rules of our curse?"
Vader's smirk turned cruel, and Obi-Wan felt it as something settled over him―a ghost, a shadow, but a familiar presence. He tensed as the whisper came again, right in his ear―a cruel joke, a lie eternal.
"Anakin?" Obi-Wan breathed.
"Master..." whispered the ghost of Anakin Skywalker.
Before him, Vader chuckled, a deep, sinister sound that sent chills racing down Obi-Wan's spine, chills that had nothing to do with the illusionary ghost behind him. I won't turn around. I won't look. I won't shatter. Not for him. Not for anyone.
Obi-Wan looked at Vader with pained blue eyes. "Stop this," he commanded.
"Why should I?" Vader asked, almost lazily, his left hand returning to where it had been under Obi-Wan's chin.
Why, indeed. Obi-Wan felt like he was suffocating, trapped between the two sides of the man he loved: Vader, cold, cruel, dark, manipulative; and Anakin, sweet, light, loving. Both of them ghosts, products of a thousand years of love and heartbreak, repeated in an endless cycle determined to destroy them.
The worst part was that it felt real, the illusionary Anakin behind him. Obi-Wan could almost feel his warm breath tickling the back of his neck.
Obi-Wan squeezed his eyes shut, determined not to let Vader see the despair building within him. "Please," he all but begged, his eyes reopening to gaze imploringly at Vader. "Stop this."
Vader said nothing, but Obi-Wan could feel it as the illusion faded. He closed his eyes again and took a deep, shaky breath.
"He's dead, Obi-Wan," Vader purred. "Merely memory. I am all that remains."
"You are a monster," Obi-Wan breathed.
"I have never tried to deny that allegation," Vader replied. "But you must accept the truth: Skywalker is dead, and the cycle goes on."
They fell silent. Obi-Wan tried to process everything that had happened since he was dragged into this room; he'd been confronted with so many harsh truths in the last half hour that it left him feeling raw. It didn't help that Vader had reached up to trace his hand down Obi-Wan's face again; this time Obi-Wan had no strength to fight back. He tried to fall into the Force and think, but was met with what felt like some sort of barrier; was the Light Side so diminished that he couldn't access it at all for the darkness intervening?
Vader's touch was soft, yet somehow still dangerous, as if at any minute he could decide he didn't want to keep Obi-Wan alive after all. Though death might be a mercy, Obi-Wan thought, if it would break this cycle―and if it could avoid the other possibility that Obi-Wan sensed in Vader's touch: that this could become a relationship where blood―Obi-Wan's blood―was spilled to satisfy Vader. Obi-Wan highly doubted either of these were likely to happen, but the possibility was there; the Sith were unstable and unpredictable, after all. They had been so for centuries; they would remain so for many more.
But will we be around to discover if that is the truth? Obi-Wan wondered. This cycle...if it breaks this time, will we simply reset again? Or will we finally be able to find some peace in the Living Force?
Vader's voice drew him back out of his thoughts. "You're holding back," he said. "You won't let yourself love me. I can feel the conflict within you―you don't know what to do, with your life turned on its head. You don't wish to compromise who you are, but at the same time you can feel the Light Side getting weaker and weaker with every passing moment."
Obi-Wan shook his head. "Stop," he said, but his voice was weak―what Vader was saying was the truth, after all.
Vader didn't obey. "Give in, Obi-Wan," he purred. "You have little choice. And you never were able to resist him for long."
Obi-Wan closed his eyes, pained and struggling with himself. What should I do? What should I do?
"Why won't you let go?" Vader growled, frustrated.
Obi-Wan struggled to find an answer.
"I'm here
I'm now
Arrived
I fell into your love
I fell into your lie eternal...!
I'm here
I'm now
Survived
I fell into your love
I fell into your lie... (Ohhhh...!)"
"You wear his face," Obi-Wan said finally. Vader tilted his head inquisitively, and Obi-Wan elaborated, trying to keep his voice from shaking. "You wear his face, yet you look nothing alike. You use his voice, yet I've never heard him speak as you do. You bear that scar above your right eye, yet it means something different now―no longer a lesson learned but a reminder of the pain that drove you to become who you are now. I cannot look at you and see Anakin, yet he is all I see. It is a trick of this cycle of ours that I have watched the love of my life die a thousand times and never been able to stop it, but this time it is worse, because you are alive, but he―he is not." Obi-Wan shook his head. "I cannot live with this burden on my soul―this knowledge that while I have seen the death of Anakin Skywalker a thousand times, the creature that now wears his face is a monster I cannot find it in me to love. That is worse than a thousand deaths."
Vader considered this in silence for a few moments. "You truly think me a monster?"
"You said as much yourself," Obi-Wan pointed out.
Vader conceded that with a conemplative nod. "Yet you haven't run away. All this time your hands have been free and my door has been unlocked. You could have run."
"No I couldn't," Obi-Wan snorted. "You've got Cody and Boil lingering outside, just waiting for something to go wrong. Besides, I'd be dead before I reached the door. I have no doubts that if you can't have me, you will not hesitate to kill me rather than let another Jedi walk free."
Vader almost looked as if the very idea wounded him―almost. "But you do not have to remain a Jedi," the Sith insisted.
"I will not Fall," Obi-Wan returned vehemently. "Not for you."
Vader growled. "Damn your stubbornness, Kenobi! Don't you see that things are different this time? If you die I shall go on living, the cycle disrupted; but any way we turn the cycle veers off its usual course! The galaxy is changing, and us along with it―us, the stagnant souls, the immortal beings living through a thousand years' worth of steadily growing corruption and imbalance. Now the tides have turned, and we must embrace the new reality we are presented with, or be washed away by the now-dead ideals of the thousands of years that have come before!" He almost sounded like Anakin again, the same old argument of a thousand lifetimes―but there was a sinister shadow enhancing his words this time that let Obi-Wan know this was no longer a game.
"I will not compromise my morals, the beliefs that have sustained me, sustained us, for a thousand years!" Obi-Wan shot back. "We have lived a thousand lives, witnessed the rise and fall of a thousand worlds, watched the balance of power shift back and forth until it was no longer clear who held the most cards, endured the deaths of millions of influential people, some of them ones we were close to―and through all that, we have only lost ourselves twice, towards the very beginning when we were still naïve enough to think we could solve the mystery of this endless endeavor in only a few lifetimes. We have survived this long without losing sight of who we are―I will not let that change now that the galaxy is in the greatest turmoil it had endured since the fall of the Sith and the start of our curse a thousand years ago."
Vader's voice was abruptly very quiet and very deadly. "But you liked it, didn't you?" he said. "That taste of the Dark Side I gave you, when I kissed you before. You liked the power. You've been fighting me for over an hour, defending yourself and your Jedi Order with every word, but deep inside some part of you recognizes the truth of my words, and craves it. It is drowned by the rest of you, the part blind to the shifting galaxy that recognizes only strength and power in this dawn of a new age. But it is there, and it has been the persistent doubt in your head this entire time."
Obi-Wan faltered; was he right? Was there a part of him buried deep within that agreed with what Vader was saying? The Force seemed to have forsaken him in this moment, and he could not call within himself to check...not unless...
"Perhaps one more taste will do the trick," Vader said, and before Obi-Wan could protest had kissed him once more.
"If you didn't desire me, my world could never feel more surreal
'Cos it's only you can touch me
Deep enough to heal...
N' if you didn't inspire me, then on my knees
I would fall like rain
'Cos it's only you can calm me with your touch
Your voice, so softly...
Whispering..."
The Force surged and swept over him once more, an unbroken tidal wave of dark energy and lust and anger and power. Obi-Wan's head spun with the feeling, and something inside him―the traitorous part that had agreed with Vader's sentiments, he assumed―broke free and roared with pleasure as the tide swept in, crashing over him in wave after wave of terrifying might. He could barely pick out Vader's corrupted Force signature amongst the mass, and barely registered the kiss itself, so focused on the power of the Dark Side was he. As it was, he seemed to be losing this last fight; the torrent rushed over him, and he was drowning, drowning, drowning...
But did he want to come up for air?
The Force settled slowly as Vader pulled away, and the receding tide left Obi-Wan's heart racing and head spinning from the sudden rush of power.
"You see?" Vader breathed, his stained eyes alight once more with the exhilaration of the Dark Side. "It's intoxicating, isn't it?"
You once said the same thing about me, Obi-Wan thought, a century ago, locked in a dark room and hidden from everyone―taking a moment to just love amidst the chaos of the crisis we were investigating.
Aloud, he shakily admitted, "Yes...it was. It is."
"So you will Fall?"
Still Obi-Wan hesitated. Force help me, what should I do? He could not deny the thing that had awoken inside him that called for the power of the Dark Side, but he wasn't ready to give up centuries' of morals and principles that had guided him through some of the worst hellscapes this curse could throw at them.
But this is by far the cruelest.
Vader sighed. "Obi-Wan. Why do you still deny? It is all but destiny, now. So stop fighting it. Join me. Fall. Take your place at my side, where you are meant to be―we can defy this curse upon us and rule this forsaken galaxy the way we want to. The Emperor need never be aware of your real identity; we will give you a new name, a new life, a new purpose. Fall into this life, into my love."
Into your lie. The greatest and cruelest lie you have ever told. Obi-Wan closed his eyes once more and finally resigned himself to the fate that lay ahead of him. Here I go again. Just as I always have. Just as I always will.
"Fall," Vader said again, his voice the barest whisper.
"I'm here (I'm here)
I'm now (I'm now)
Arrived (Arrived)
I fell into your love
I fell into your lie eternal...
I'm here
I'm now
Survived
I fell into your love
I fell into your―
I'm here
I'm now
Arrived
I fell into your love
I fell into your lie eternal...!
I'm here
I'm now
Survived
I fell into your love
I fell into your lie..."
Fall. Obi-Wan searched for the beast within him.
Fall. He found it.
Fall. He acknowledged it.
Fall. He reached an understanding with it.
Fall.
"What will it be, my love?" Vader asked.
Obi-Wan opened his eyes. He looked at Vader. He hesitated once more. Fall.
Obi-Wan Fell.
...I think I managed to make that even more emotionally devastating than it was originally...which was kind of my goal, but I'm still amazed at myself. There will be two other parts to this, a new one and an updated version of The Distance; should be up within the month, but you know me, I get distracted very easily and it could end up taking until May to get them both done. (I hope it doesn't take that long.) As always, please leave a review if you liked it―and if you're rereading the updated version, feel free to send me a PM if it won't let you review a second time. I'd love to hear your thoughts!