The corridor was as blindingly white as the room he'd just exited, and nothing was labelled. Not that there would be an opportunity to read anything. Vader was hardly going to pause to allow his quarry time to adjust to the surroundings. Obi-Wan couldn't run forever – as much as he might want to.
He'd have to stop eventually, hopefully under his own power, because being stopped by an enraged Sith would be sure to end badly. As soon as Obi-Wan judged that enough distance was covered, he would stop to get his bearings. Signs would be helpful in this endeavour; otherwise navigation was going to be a nightmare.
First things first though. Keep running. Ignore the blood pumping abnormally loud in your ears, and make peace with the fact that it is effectively drowning out sounds of pursuit. Do not look back in case you lose ground or momentum. Cessation of movement will mean capture or worse. Keep your legs pumping. Keep up the pep talk. Try to remember what you can of this place.
There is no try. There is only do or do not. Sith, that's not what he needed to remember. Panic was clearly disrupting the efficiency of his thought processes.
Half heartedly, Obi-Wan attempted to scour his memory of the facility from his brief tour long ago, but fear denied clarity. Just as he suspected it would. There was nothing for it but to keep running, even if his legs felt small and inadequate beneath him.
He had more than his feet to help him though. Obi-Wan tightly drew his shields around him in a few short bursts of concentration. Hopefully it would be enough to throw Vader off the chase.
He ran down one corridor and along another before the Force called to him, influencing the direction in which he was travelling. Obi-Wan blindly followed, seeing no better alternative.
Cold sweat sticking the simple tunic to his back, Obi-Wan paused by an unremarkable door, the Force urging him to enter. Perhaps it led to a hangar bay or a communications room? Both would be welcome.
It opened to a medical bay, one that had recently seen violence. Obi-Wan turned to leave when he was compelled onwards by the same omnipotent power, and so he begrudgingly stepped inside. The door swished closed behind him, offering the illusion of safety. A small one, yes, but a closed door at his back was preferable to one that was open.
A bank of broken bacta tanks lined one wall, gutted and glassless. They seemed taller than was standard, but perhaps that was a matter of perspective because everything looked so much bigger now, so much more intimidating. Shards of glass littered the floor which was slippery and wet with what Obi-Wan hoped was not blood. Spilled bacta, perhaps?
Gingerly he moved through the labyrinthine room, conscious of his bare feet. It would take a while to thoroughly explore the place. Time that was perhaps better spent elsewhere? Yet the Force was insistent in its desire to be obeyed in this. Obi-Wan hesitated a moment, before complying.
Though he kept his ears strained for the tell tale swish that would herald Vader's arrival. He did this in the unlikely event that the Force didn't inform him beforehand, which was a possibility given its recent fallibility.
There was little of the durasteel and chrome one would expect of a med bay, and there was a noticeable absence of med-droids. Many of the instruments were alien to his eyes. Some of them were mildly threatening in design. The blinding whiteness was subdued here, no doubt for the benefit of recovering patients. Obi-Wan was glad of the reduced glare because it made things so much easier to see, and limited the necessity of squinting. But then, perhaps that was not the best thing? The large streak of brown that marked one wall told its own story, as did the blaster shots indenting a steel cabinet close by. There was disquiet here. A ripple in the Force.
The sense of unease that he had felt upon awakening began to intensify. Obi-Wan paused by the first droid he found, its front panel still smoking from a hit that was unmistakably made by a lightsaber. Strange to find a battle droid in a place of healing.
He was about to pass by, when he was suddenly struck by a strong premonition that warned him to leave before it was too late. Beyond this droid he would discover something terrible. A truth from which there would be no turning back. It was move forward, or move back.
Obi-Wan reached out to the Force for guidance only to be greeted with silence. He was on his own then. Move forward or move back? One thing was certain, it was dangerous to dally. Indecision was a luxury he could ill afford with a murderous Sith on his trail.
He bit his bottom lip. It was an old habit of his as a child, one he'd long since grown out of. Chagrined at the unconscious slip, Obi-Wan quickly withdrew his teeth from his now bleeding lip and placed the palm of his hand over the bottom half of his face in lieu of such a childish action. This was his preferred form of comfort. The one his adult self used to express the same emotion. Sith, he was thinking in past tense already. That could not be good.
Speaking of past things, he missed the scratch of his beard. His skin felt curiously naked to the touch without facial hair. Wrong. Foreign. The gesture didn't feel the same, and so did not carry the comfort and relief he expected. And just then, Obi-Wan needed comfort. Too much had changed, too quickly. And that was even before awakening into this body. Even now, he was just itching to introduce teeth to lip again. Would it be so terrible to give in to self comfort?
What was happening to him? Was he somehow reverting to his younger self? Impossible! How to explain it then? Vader might have the answer. Vader! He had to act. Now. Obi-Wan berated himself for the precious seconds wasted on deliberation over a matter so trivial, and at such a critical time. Where was his focus?
He circled the droid and the twisted metal of some unidentified machine that flanked it, senses notched even higher despite the greater drain on his energy. Still, nothing could prepare him for the carnage that awaited him on the other side.
The wall decoration he witnessed earlier could not hope to compete with the great swathes of brown that covered floor, wall and ceiling, and every other surface within the immediate vicinity. Dried blood. He had guessed as much previously, but it was easier not to confront the possibility. That was not possible here, with the physical evidence of the donors lying higgledy-piggledy around a single medical carrier, like supplicants at a sacrificial alter. Except they were the victims.
Nine. Obi-Wan counted.
It was not difficult to piece this part of the puzzle. These were the fledgling Rebels that Vader, mentioned. Strange that he didn't recognise any of them, but then...? How stupid of him, that would be a little difficult to do now.
The Force vibrated strongly here with echoes of pain, much of it immediate and fresh. Obi-Wan distantly sensed his own spiralling anguish join those of the dead. It would be days before the echoes faded. Obi-Wan had experience of such things on the battlefield, and it always left him with a feeling of terrible sadness. As it did now.
There was nothing quick or merciful about the manner in which they were murdered. He could tell that already just by looking. One corpse was just a torso. Another resembled nothing so much as the surface of Utapau – the body riddled with holes, and held together by nothing more than connective tissue.
There was no nausea. No sting of unshed tears. Obi-Wan was used to death and familiar with wholesale carnage, too. He had seen worse than this in his career as a Jedi. Still, a part of him wished he could experience such natural reactions now. He couldn't fathom where the longing originated, either. Could one person see too much? Was it a bad thing to become inured to the suffering of strangers? Yes, if the heart still feels but the body cannot. Mind and body should never be in conflict.
Obi-Wan padded towards the medical carrier sensing that the true horror lie in wait there, feet feeling inexplicably heavy. Steps curiously unhurried as a consequence as he slowly navigated the carnage to reach the nexus. His gaze taking in a single wookiee arm still clutching a blaster, the hand clenched tight. A severed head, the eyes blotted out. Two more battle droids twisted into scrap metal – forms barely identifiable. Small details. Big details.
One step. Two. Five. Eight. He had arrived but did not look down at the contents.
He just needed a moment. Just one. Indulgent, Kenobi, he scolded. Get on with it.
The smell should have been warning enough. The air was heavy with the acrid scent of burnt flesh, but it was densest here, no doubt as a result of long occupancy.
Obi-Wan Kenobi. Nude except for loose fitting sleep pants that rested over patches of bacta – the edges peeping out from the hem. Someone had apparently cared enough to try to preserve his dignity. Obi-Wan couldn't help but feel that the gesture was wasted, because there was nothing dignified about this piece of dead flesh that used to be himself. The torso was charred and shiny from repeated applications of bacta. The legs were severed at the knee and crudely bandaged with the same substance. Thankfully the eyes were closed, the area around the lids bruised and red. A breath mask hung uselessly at a blackened neck. The dead had no need of breathing apparatus, so he found the placement fitting. The hair was remarkably intact, auburn strands glinting dully in the light. Hard to mistake the colour, a rarity even among humans. Little details. Big details.
Obi-Wan knelt and reached out to touch himself, just to confirm with his last sense that this was real. Just to ascertain that his eyes were not lying. Just... because...
His own mind unable to wrap itself around the impossibility of what he was doing.
A small pudgy hand, one that he still couldn't accept as his own, lightly touched the cadaver's chest. Better to think of it as a corpse than himself. Safer. The flesh was still warm. Recently died or residual heat from being deep fried? Did it even matter? All at once he wanted to laugh at the absurdness of it all, but he resisted the urge in the knowledge that an outburst of that nature would likely lead to madness.
It was clearly time to leave. The Force had shown him what it wanted, and nothing else could be gained from lingering. It was most certainly time to stop looking down at his dead body. Yet, he couldn't stop staring. Transfixed, despite his best efforts to break the paralysis holding his body hostage. Truthfully, he wasn't trying as hard as he knew he should be doing. There were techniques to overcome shock, even if the effects were only temporary, but he disregarded them in favour of staring.
Distantly he felt his shields slipping. Layer upon layer of his protection sliding away to leave him wide open. Unsurprisingly, Vader, suddenly blared bright upon his senses, a seething blot of darkness on an otherwise grey landscape. A landscape made grey by the same person.
There was no light present in this facility, beyond that which could be seen with simple sight. Too many had died here. Obi-Wan sensed further death beyond this room. Who else had fallen defending his broken body? How many more lives had paid the ultimate price? The facility was nothing more than a mass grave now. A grave that he believed he was soon to join, because for all Darth Vader's talk of family, he was a Sith and Obi-Wan was a Jedi, and to his mind there could be no middle ground. One would prevail, while the other perished. He was not so naive as to believe himself the former.
It was obvious his old student now had a lock on his location and was approaching at a phenomenal speed. His rage preceding his physical body; such was the extent of his power. The building was beginning to shake with his fury. Small tremors that were gradually growing in strength, as Darth Vader drew closer.
Obi-Wan could feel the vibrations travelling through his knees and also through the hand that connected him to the past, to what he had once been. Perhaps that explained the inability to relinquish his hold? To let go one first needed to accept, and he was by no means at the point of acceptance. Which was clearly what the Force had intended to happen.
So, why was he still kneeling? Get up. Run! The commands were ineffective, useless. They held no sway over his body, which remained steadfastly static. The Force was insistently blaring danger, without let up. For all that, Obi-Wan was still unable to disengage his hand, and remained knelt over the mutilated corpse of his original self.