It was only the next morning when the Temple was finally still once again. Obi-Wan had walked with Yoda, surveying the wake of the destruction that had met them when they arrived. He had lost count of how many bodies he had seen on the ground, both clone and Jedi, all of whom were dead. They had already been searching for an hour, and still, no survivors had been found. Out of all of the people they had pulled out and laid to rest, none of them had been alive.
The only Jedi he had any hope for was the young Padawan, Caleb Dume. Obi-Wan had briefly met him during the battle to defend the Temple, and Caleb had warned him about a broadcast coming out from the Temple. It was leading all Jedi to it, instead of warning them away. At his suggestion, Obi-Wan had gotten to work recording a new message and using it to replace the original. Hopefully, there were still Jedi alive to receive it.
Yoda walked up to Obi-Wan who was finishing his work. "I have recalibrated the code, warning all surviving Jedi to stay away."
"For the clones to discover the recalibration, a long time it will take," he affirmed, and he watched as Obi-Wan shut down the calibrator. All they could do was hope the message would be heard. Yoda began to walk away, but Obi-Wan spoke up.
"Wait, Master, there is something I must know," he told the Grandmaster. Walking over to the side of the room, Obi-Wan opened up the database for the Temple.
Warning him, Yoda said, "If into the security recordings you go, only pain will you find."
Obi-Wan was insistent though. "I must know the truth, Master," he told him, searching through the files for anything that might bring him answers. There were too many questions, too many horrors with no explanation. There had to be something that would give him a clue.
All he saw was more of what he had already imagined had happened. Clones were charging through the Temple, firing at Jedi of all ages. From the eldest to the youngest, they all fell to the blue bolts raging across the holograms. There was no mercy, no justification, just the death he and Yoda had already felt happen hours ago.
Until one recording gave him hope. Barreling out of a room on the third floor, Obi-Wan saw Anakin defending his fellow Jedi, taking charge and pushing back the forces that threatened them. He shouted at them, yelling for them to escape, but a shudder in the footage made them all hesitate. After a moment, Anakin pushed everyone else out of view of the camera, right before falling through the floor.
He didn't bother to shut off the recording but ran in the direction of where Anakin had fallen. Though he heard Yoda calling for him, telling him not to run off, Obi-Wan didn't listen, didn't care. It didn't matter what the other Jedi was saying, he had to find Anakin.
It had occurred to him that Anakin was on Coruscant when the clones betrayed the Jedi, but not even in his greatest fears had he considered that Anakin might have joined the fallen in death. The possibility had him stumbling as he ran, frantically searching for where his apprentice had been lost.
When he finally turned the corner to the hall Anakin should have been in, Obi-Wan was greeted by a mountain of crumbled stone, and a gaping ceiling that suggested that as many as three or four floors had been destroyed. After gaping at the destruction for a moment, Obi-Wan ran to the base of the rubble, searching for any sign of Anakin. There had to something. His cloak, his lightsaber, anything.
He found multiple of these, but none of them belonged to the Chosen One. Obi-Wan pulled even more Jedi out of the wreckage, those who had been trapped underneath and those who had been on the upper floors and fallen down. Every corpse he found only weakened his hope further, but he refused to give up. For every time Anakin had pulled him to safety, for every mission Anakin had salvaged at the last minute, Obi-Wan kept searching, believing that he could pull off one last miracle.
The search tired him, his body becoming as weak as his hope. Nothing, still nothing. His body, at least, had to be here, but surely it was at the bottom of the debris, and Obi-Wan became desperate. Standing back, he ceased to pick through the stone and instead looked through the Force. He found Anakin's body beneath him, still buried by meters of rubble.
Lifting everything he could off of the area, Obi-Wan uncovered his apprentice, his heartbeat lodged in his throat. What if it was all over? What if while Obi-Wan was gasping, on the verge of tears and barely able to breathe, Anakin wasn't breathing at all? He climbed through the rest of the debris, praying that Anakin's luck had seen him through. Please, just one more time, Anakin. One more miracle.
His body was lying, beaten and bruised, and blood had dried on his forehead. Obi-Wan panicked, rushing to his side and propping him upright. "Anakin," he called, not thinking to use the Force to see if he was alive. He couldn't concentrate, and he didn't want to reach that far only to find that his worst fear had become reality. "Anakin, please!"
Anakin couldn't be dead. Obi-Wan had lost too many friends, too many people he loved, not just today but throughout this entire forsaken war. Cradling his face, Obi-Wan closed his eyes, praying to anything or anyone that was listening. "Not you too," he cried, letting the tears fall. "Not now. Don't go down a path I can't follow."
His body shook, and the last of his hope began to slip away. Slowly his hand slid from Anakin's face to his chest, and Obi-Wan searched for a heartbeat, a breath, any sign that he had not lost his brother, his friend.
Slightly, so little that it was barely even noticeable, he felt Anakin's chest heave. It was a ragged, painful breath, but a breath nonetheless. Collapsing, Obi-Wan let himself fall forward, crying into Anakin's worn robes. He was alive, against all the odds, Anakin was alive.
He no longer tried to hold back his sobs, only Anakin was there to hear them anyway. Anakin was the sole survivor in the Jedi Temple, the last Knight in the Order. Obi-Wan's one solace in this whole nightmare was that Anakin had survived.
Now that free air was working its way into his lungs, Anakin was beginning to stir. His eyes broke open before any other part of his body moved, and all he saw was Obi-Wan crying, clinging to him. When his voice began working again, he managed to croak out one word: "Master."
At the sound of his voice, Obi-Wan looked up, his face still shining with tears. "Anakin," he said once, before hugging him tightly. The apprentice wrapped a shaking arm around his teacher, and for one moment, all the pain from that day was bearable.
Eventually, Obi-Wan pulled Anakin to his feet, supporting him while he was still recovering. Slowly, the two stumbled back to the command center, and Anakin saw the casualties he had missed after his fall. "Have you found anyone else?"
"No one," Obi-Wan confessed, helping him up the stairs. "Master Yoda and I have been searching for hours. You're the only survivor I've found. If anyone else is alive, they must have escaped the Temple."
"I tried to get people out through the vents," Anakin told him, grunting as they ascended the steps. "A few of the Younglings escaped with O-Mer, but I don't know who else made it out. The floor collapsed before I could see anyone else leave."
It was a chance, one that might have saved the lives of those Jedi. "We'll find them," he promised, "as soon as we figure out what has happened. We'll find them all."
They finally arrived at the command center, where Yoda was sitting and waiting for them. When he saw Anakin, his eyes widened. He hadn't expected for the Chosen One to survive. He didn't say much to him. "Pulled off another miracle, have you, hmm?"
"Not the one I was hoping for," Anakin admitted, sitting down on a bench along the edge of the room. "I was trying to protect the others, not save myself."
"Protect them, you did," Yoda assured him, leaning forward on his cane. "More so than any other Jedi here. Your failure, this is not."
After getting Anakin back Obi-Wan's common sense returned, and he stroked his beard as he paced the room. "There has to be some reason all of this has happened," he rationalized. "We need to find who has caused all of this."
Narrowing his eyes, Yoda asked, "Found him already, have we not?"
Wait, he knows who did this? Anakin wondered, and he watched as Yoda rose to his feet, wearily walking about.
"The work of Sideous, this is," Yoda told the Jedi, looking down. "Warned us, the young Inquisitor did. Heed her warning, did we?" He laughed, at himself mostly. "No. Failed, the Jedi Order has."
"Master, Sideous is dead," Obi-Wan argued. "He can not possibly have caused this. Perhaps Dooku has a hand in it, but-"
"Killed Dooku, I could have," Yoda reminded him, pointing his cane at Obi-Wan. "Failed, I did to stop my old apprentice, failed, our Council has to kill him since. Hmph! Where is our Council now, I wonder?"
Neither man answered, knowing full well that the rest of the Jedi Masters were likely dead. Yoda saw in their faces that they understood. Slowly, he pulled out his lightsaber, staring at it with pained eyes. "So ends the Jedi Order," he murmured quietly, before looking up at Anakin alone. "Your apprentice was wise to walk away."
Anakin's eyes searched the Grandmaster, trying to think of why he would say such a thing. Was now really the time to bring that up again? It was only when he saw Yoda's hand turn over, letting his lightsaber fall to the ground, that he understood.
They were speechless. Neither Jedi could move as Yoda slowly began to walk towards the door. Without so much as a glance back, he left them in the command center of the Temple, the doors hissing shut behind him.
Obi-Wan looked to Anakin, but he looked as stunned as his Master. He ran out after Yoda, unable to believe what he thought had just happened, but Anakin only resigned to the fact. Apart from his low capability to move, he did not move because he knew how this would end. He had seen it before.
Yoda wasn't coming back.
It didn't take long for Obi-Wan to catch up to Yoda, as he wasn't moving very fast. As painful as it was for him to run past the bodies lying on the ground, he chose to focus on Yoda instead. "Master Yoda, you can't be serious!" Joining him on his walk, Obi-Wan was sure he could talk some sense into the old Grandmaster, but he did not waver.
"Into exile I must go," he told Obi-Wan, continuing to walk through the lobby of the Temple. "Failed, I have."
"Giving up is not the answer," insisted Obi-Wan, looking back at the stairs to the command center. "There are survivors out there, Anakin said as much himself. If we abandon them now, we abandon the Jedi Order and everything it has stood for."
Only at that did Yoda pause in his exit. "And what does the Order stand for, hmm? Peace? Honor? Bravery?" He laughed again as if the idea was ridiculous. "Right, they all were. Barriss Offee, Ahsoka Tano, Count Dooku, saw the corruption in us, they did."
Obi-Wan wasn't concerned about the corruption, there was a bigger issue at hand here! The Jedi needed to regroup, organize what strength they had left, and protect whomever they could, not run away from it all! "This is not the Jedi Way!"
"The Jedi Way?" repeated Yoda, continuing to walk on. With his free hand, he pointed at a child lying dead next to one of the broken pillars of the front entrance of the Temple. "That is the Jedi Way. If you will not abandon it now, take you it will, as it has taken the rest of your kind."
Your kind. Not 'our', 'your'. "So this is it? All of the work you've done for the Jedi all nine-hundred years of your life is over?"
"Led the Jedi to this, my work has," Yoda declared, not turning back but leaving Obi-Wan standing at the entrance of the Temple. "It should never have been started, and end it while I still can, I will."
The ex-Grandmaster of the Jedi Order began his descent down the front steps, his green head disappearing over the edge. He left behind Obi-Wan Kenobi with one other Jedi as his only ally. He and Anakin Skywalker were, to their knowledge, the last of the Jedi religion.