Obi-Wan Kenobi stumbled across the body of a clone as he and Yoda silently made their way into the turbolift. Tears filled his eyes, and he wondered, Who could do this?
He still couldn't bring himself to believe it. Shaak Ti, Jocasta Nu, Cin Drallig, even younglings… Only a monster could do such deeds. And… Where is Anakin? His heart nearly broke. It was all too much, too much…
At the Jedi Master's side, Yoda grunted as he changed his position, leaning heavily on his gimer stick. His eyes narrowed as he watched the indicators on the turbolift flash; they had reached their destination. Something wrong here, there is…
The turbolift door hissed open and Obi-Wan Kenobi slipped out and to one side, silently, professionally. Dead clones littered the ground along with severed limbs and heads. A thin sliver of light still shone through the open door to the Council chamber and he blanched, knowing what must be inside.
Suddenly, he stumbled over something small and round that lay near the wall. A strange premonition suddenly manifested in his head, as he bent to retrieve whatever it was. His hand closed around a glimmering cylinder about the size and shape of a lightsaber…
His head began to throb and his gut churned with nausea. Tears filled his vision as he moved to the beam of light and lifted the lightsaber into it, somehow knowing what it was.
Anakin's lightsaber.
Obi-Wan Kenobi was renowned throughout the Jedi Order for being the most restrained, calm, detached Jedi that had ever been produced. But Obi-Wan wasn't perfect. He had a forbidden attachment.
Obi-Wan was Anakin Skywalker's friend.
So when he realized that what he was holding was his friend's lightsaber, he did what any man – any man who is not a Jedi – would do upon finding out about the death of a friend.
He dropped to his knees and sobbed.
The waves of churning guilt and grief flooded him as he dropped the weapon and covered his tightly drawn face with his palsied hands. Dead! He can't be! he screamed into the Force as he clenched his eyes and his jaw tightly shut. Great convulsing sobs shattered him and he slowly sank down until he was absolutely crushed, just crushed beneath the weight of horror.
"Knight Skywalker!" Yoda suddenly exclaimed, and he dropped his gimer stick, lurching toward a dark figure lying by the door to the Council chamber. Obi-Wan did not move, even though he had never heard Yoda so excited before. He had no desire to see his friend's body. Another dry heave shook him as he slowly stood, tears dripping down the end of his nose.
Then, he suddenly realized what had excited Master Yoda so much as the little Jedi Master slowly lifted the fallen figure by using the Force, and Obi-Wan suddenly thrilled with an impossible hope as a sound came to his ears: a wheezing, choked breath.
Anakin was alive. Blood was streaming from the corners of his mouth in twin oil-glossy lines, but he was alive.
Obi-Wan rushed over to his friend and fell to his knees, wrapping his arms around him, pulling him to his chest. Yoda stood and called his gimer stick to his hand. "Finish our business, we must. I shall recalibrate the beacon. Take young Skywalker to Senator Organa, will you?" he asked, grim.
Obi-Wan looked up as he tried to drape Anakin across his shoulders without success. "Of course. Can you handle --?"
Yoda cut him off with a look. "No time. Go." And with that, the Jedi Master was gone.
Obi-Wan paused for a moment and clutched Anakin's head to his chest. There was long moment in which he sat enveloped within the Force, willing it into his friend's body, and finally, his confused, twisted thoughts became clear.
Live. Live, my friend.
Dead.
Blackness.
Is this… death? It is like sleep. Restful. No difference at all…
And Anakin Skywalker was awake again. He choked on something, a tube in his throat, tried to breathe in, found that he couldn't. He panicked for a second, until he opened his eyes to a floating world of blue-tinged green.
A bacta tank? But I was dead.
Then, a voice in the Force. Familiar: Not if I have anything to say about it, old friend.
Anakin slowly twisted in the surreal buoyancy until through the wavering haze, he saw a man standing with his arms folded, a small beard, flaming red hair, a subtle smile, perhaps a hint of sorrow in the eyes…
Obi-Wan!
The Jedi Master smiled wanly. "Hello there."
All Anakin could do was nod. For suddenly, all that he had done, all that he had allowed himself to become, flooded back into his senses and seared him like a red-hot knife. He had thought he was dead, but by some chance of the Force, he had been brought back. But the others, the ones he had killed with his own hands –
They weren't coming back.
Padme. Where is Padme?
My child?
He felt himself now in the Force just barely, his powers of perception weakened, utterly helpless, with everything he held dear gone. Just gone. All that he had left was himself. Which was all he was ever going to have, anyway.
Then, twisting his agonized limbs, throwing his head back, the Vader in him began to scream a long, terrible scream that knifed through the Force, blindly reached to grip anything, everything, and crushed it. Tortured metal wrenched and snapped and he let the dark side in, a pounding red surf that crested high and broke until he lay trembling, shuddering in a puddle of bacta on a freezing cold med-bay floor, and Obi-Wan Kenobi was standing nearby, horrified at what he was seeing. He suddenly understood, understood all too well. Anakin had worked that slaughter. Anakin, his best friend, a murderer. And something more:
Anakin Skywalker –
Had fallen –
To the Dark Side.