Weeks passed. Darth Apophis found himself carrying out his Master's orders with less and less enthusiasm. No longer did he take as much pleasure in thwarting the Jedi that sought to end the reign of the Sith. Now he sat in his hidden base on Geonosis, brooding. Several times he'd had to force his mind to go blank in order to stamp out the pain that she had caused. To keep himself from reaching into the Force to feel for her signature to comfort him. To keep himself from throwing away a lifetime of planning and going to Coruscant in search of her; he wouldn't even know what to do once he got there.
So deep in his sulking was he that he never saw the security monitor blink once, twice, then cut to black. He did notice, however, when the other five went out and the sound of the door opening caught his ear. He swung around, crimson blade drawn.
"Your trail was almost insultingly simple to follow, my darling," she said with a radiant smile.
He lowered his blade but didn't deactivate it. "Get out," he snapped venomously. "Take another step and I will kill you like I should have done long ago."
She walked closer. "Before I distracted you with my feminine charms, yes?"
He didn't laugh. "I am deadly serious, Jedi."
Asajj nodded, her attempt at playfulness disappearing as quickly as ice in the Tatooine sun. "Hear me out first, Obi-Wan."
His fingers tightened on the hilt of his lightsaber as she approached. "This is the last time I will warn you-"
"I've left the Order."
Time seemed to slow as he processed her words. Surely he hadn't heard her correctly. "What?"
"You heard me. I've resigned my service as a Jedi."
Red plasma disappeared with a snap. He stared at her as if he were looking at a ghost. "What kind of trick is this? Have you not done enough damage already, Asajj?"
"It's no trick, my dear." Her voice cracked. "I-I'm no longer welcome in the Temple. There's been a...development."
Forgetting his lightsaber, he cupped her face in his hands and stroked her cheekbones with his thumbs. Tears filled her eyes but she was refusing to let them fall. Despite his hatred of the Jedi as a whole, he hated seeing her cry even more. "What are you talking about? Have they harmed you?"
She curled her fingers around one of his hands and drew it down to her abdomen. His brow furrowed. "I'm pregnant," she whispered shakily in his ear. His eyes went wide in shock. He stared at her for a moment, then at her belly beneath his palm. How could he have missed the slight roundness that had developed since he had last seen her? "It broke my heart, but I had to leave. I wouldn't have been able to hide it forever. And the questions would come, of course. I...I couldn't risk our child. I don't know what the Council would have done with it, if they'd have even let it live, but-"
His lips covered hers to silence her choked words. Unlike the majority of their other kisses, this one was the most loving, affectionate, and heated they'd ever shared. Asajj melted in his arms, tangling her fingers in his hair and pressing herself as close as she could to him. He took care to not crush her in his embrace despite how desperately he wanted to keep her there.
"Stay with me," he breathed when he pulled away for air. "I can protect you here from even Lord Sidious himself. I will kill him before our child is born. I'll not have it enter this life with him in command."
"My love-"
"All will be as it should by then: Sidious dead, this war over, and the galaxy under our control." And then he would have everything and give it all to her. His life, a crown, immortality. Everything she deserved.
"Obi-Wan, no. Listen to me. You don't have to do any of that. Neither of us has to. Come away with me instead. We can go somewhere where there are no Sith, no Jedi, nothing but us and our child. And our love."
He shook his head. Why did she still refuse to see reason? "My sweet, it must be this way. If I leave, we will be hunted. I will not endanger your life...lives like that. Once I kill Sidious, everything will be better. You'll both be safe."
Asajj let out a frustrated breath and opened her mouth to argue. But another voice cut through the air before she could get a single word out.
"So, this is how you spend your time when you disappear, Kenobi." Grievous. The cyborg stomped through the door with great metallic clangs. "I knew you've been distracted lately by a certain Jedi scum, but not like this. Now your betrayal will cost you and your pet your lives!"
Six lightsabers ignited simultaneously. Obi-Wan tried putting himself between the general and Asajj, but she wouldn't have it. She attacked as often as she defended, meeting Grievous's ill-gotten weapons time after time with preternatural grace and skill. She moved like water where Obi-Wan was fire, all strength and flash and distraction. It only took moments before Sith and (former) Jedi found their balance. Their coordination would have beautiful to an outside observer, like a dance instead of a battle. Asajj let Grievous's strikes come, deflecting them easily and turning their force against him. Obi-Wan stopped each one aimed at him with sheer power, preferring instead to be like a stone wall that Grievous would crash upon again and again until he destroyed himself.
The lovers fell upon Grievous together, their combined Force strength crushing him into the floor until the pistons and joints in his knees groaned in protest. They had him!
Until Grievous found a last reserve of strength and surged upward to throw them both aside.
Obi-Wan's head hit the floor first, dazing him momentarily. Asajj, ever the graceful warrior, landed on her hands, then flipped herself to her feet. She rushed at Grievous for a death blow.
The scream of rage and agony that tore from Obi-Wan's throat as four beams of light plunged through his lover's body was almost enough to cause a groundquake; nearby Geonosians outside the base instinctively took cover as small rocks shook loose from their places int the cliffsides.
Once-blue eyes bled into sickly yellow and fiery red. Dark veins spidered across fair skin and under a russet beard. The Sith attacked Grievous with a ferocity that surprised both of them...for a moment.
Even with four lightsabers at his disposal Grievous did not have the training Kenobi had, nor the Force on his side, nor the intense, soul-consuming wrath the human did. One mechanical hand went flying from his equally inorganic arm, still gripping the lightsaber. A second quickly followed it, then a third. For the first time in recent memory, Grievous felt fear. He tried to kick his once-cohort away, but the man simply raised a hand and the cyborg's claw was reduced to scrap.
Off balance, Grievous fell to one knee. His momentary surprise cost him half of his remaining arm and his last defense against the enraged Sith Lord. He would have begged for his life if he could have managed to speak after Kenobi crushed his vocal cords with his twice-damned Force. The human stared down at him for a beat, then raised his hand again. Grievous felt his ceramaplast chest plate spread open. The soft tissue beneath was now perfectly exposed to the open air. Kenobi glanced at the pulsating flesh as if it were some vile insect.
Then he drove his lightsaber into it. He didn't stop there. A twist and a sharp upward pull ended Grievous's miserable life for good.
Obi-Wan's mind seemed stuck in a haze as he stood over the smoking husk of a body. When it began to clear, he remembered. "ASAJJ!"
He ran to where she lay on the floor. Her body, always thin and light, felt like nothing in his arms as he drew her into his lap. One hand hovered over the cauterized wounds before moving down to her abdomen. He felt for her unborn child through the Force but found nothing. Her belly had been home to new life, but now it lay silent and dark. "Asajj, please," he whispered against her cheek. "Please open your eyes, my love. Open those enchanting eyes for me one more time."
He begged her to wake up for what felt like hours. As the truth sank in his words turned to unintelligible sobs. He kissed her lips fiercely; they were still warm for the moment. He was furious. At her for coming to him at all. At himself for not leaving when she'd asked, for not doing more to protect her from Grievous.
A presence behind him made him go rigid. He gripped his dead lover to him possessively to shelter her from the approaching evil. "I should have forewarned you of the dangers of falling in love with a Jedi, my apprentice," Sidious said with a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. "Their poison can corrupt almost anyone if they are clever enough. She sought to turn your mind against yourself...and she succeeded."
"Do not speak of her!" Obi-Wan hissed, snatching his shoulder away. "She loved me. She left the Jedi for me...for us."
"Did she? The Jedi are not above manipulation. It is one of their most oft used tricks. Are you so certain she would not have ensnared you and taken you back to her blasphemous Temple in chains? Are you so certain she ever loved you?"
Obi-Wan turned and lashed out with a sheet of lightning. Sidious calmly deflected it. "Asajj loved me! She was mine!"
"And now she is gone. Now you may return your focus to your duties instead of the dreams of a lovesick fool." He paused before purposefully softening his voice. "To show that I am not completely unsympathetic to your loss, I will allow you to do with the corpse what you will. Bury it, burn it, launch it into a sun, I care not. But be done with it quickly." He spared a glance at the grotesque remains of Grievous. "Since now I find myself one general short, you will assume all of his duties in addition to your own. Compose yourself swiftly, Darth Apophis. We still have much work to do."