A moment of perfect stillness passes over the room, like the shadow of a cloud over a noonday sun.
Obi Wan closes his eyes as the churning, pitchblende storm of the Dark Side recedes from his mind, leaving him gasping with emptiness. The press of Padmé's cool hand on his burning forehead feels like it's the only thing keeping his brains from spilling. She might be speaking to him, but he can't pick out any words, just a close, hush tone, a puff of breath on his face, the rockrose scent of her hair. As he tilts his head back under the hanging lamplights, the insides of his eyelids are stained hot-orange like glowing iron.
"Obi Wan," she murmurs. "Look at me."
He blinks as the smooth, milky opal of her face swims before him.
"Anakin-?" he breathes.
"Gone," she says, with a terse flick of her dark eyes. "Are you okay?" she asks. She is poised over him with all the alacrity and dauntlessness of a battlefield medic, putting a hand to the side of his face, gingerly stroking his brow with her thumb. He sighs under her delicate touch, so expertly calibrated to exactly what he needs, so unlike Anakin's assaultive pawing. He wonders, briefly, if this is what it's like to have a mother- before ruthlessly quashing the notion. These sorts of errant thoughts have been escaping his defenses with disturbing frequency as of late.
"I'm fine," he whispers, avoiding her eye.
"Fine, he says! Hmmph." The two of them turn to see Master Yoda, head bowed in concentration, a tiny clawed hand raised diagnostically over the prone form of Mace Windu. "Fine indeed! A fine mess you have made! Qui Gon Jinn it was, who put you up to this?"
"Y-yes," Obi Wan wavers. "How did you-?"
"Communed with his spirit, I have," says Yoda. He gazes down at the cool, cloudy, silver-black tiles beneath his scraping feet, quietly grumbling in a manner understood only by himself. "Discovered the way of the Whills, he has. Learned the secret of immortality." He looks up sharply. "Made him arrogant, this success has. And now, seek to involve the living he does, in more reckless experimentation."
Obi Wan shuffles halfway down the stairs, crossing his numbly quavering arms over the hollow ache in his chest. "Mace-?"
"Recover, he will," says Yoda, as he gently touches a single blunted talon to the forehead of his fallen colleague, sending the warrior-priest into a fitful healing trance- chest shuddering, chapped lips parted, nostrils flaring like a krayt dragon. His dark face and hands are marred by jagged, blistering, pinkish burns which shine sickly in the halflight. "Pain, your apprentice has caused. But no permanent damage." The word yet hovers in the air. "Retrieve young Skywalker, you must."
"Yes, I- Of course I will," says Obi Wan contritely. "He can't have gone far-" Then, blushing furiously: "I can feel him."
"Hmmnn..." Yoda rumbles, squinting thoughtfully into the middle-distance. "Perfectly fused together you are," he muses, rubbing his chin. "A testament to the strength of your bond, it is, that destroy both your souls, the joining did not. Suffer greatly did you, in the process?" He quirks his ears, his curiosity quite genuine, bordering on morbid.
"N-no," Obi Wan falters, a childlike look of bewilderment hijacking his usually brave face. "There was no s-suffering. It was- It felt-" He swallows thickly, looking down at his boots. "It felt good-"
"Subdue him, you must!" Yoda interrupts him, suddenly sounding impatient. "A danger he has become, to himself and others. Grown, his powers have, beyond his ability to understand or control them."
As if to underscore this ominous pronouncement, a hot, low, fizzling sound cuts through the air as the hanging lamplights begin to flicker, throwing the room into a dizzying alternation of amber and violet, before plunging it into beryllium darkness. Many levels below the floor, a backup generator hums to life, powering on an array of harsh emergency florescents. Obi Wan turns his face into his shoulder in anguish, as the unforgiving brightness punishes his overtaxed senses. It's quite like the end of play, he thinks, when the house lights come up, shattering the illusion. Here you are, back in reality. Now what are you going to do?
"This is all my fault," he says, quietly. "Anakin was in trouble, and I was merely trying to help him." He hugs himself, knees threatening to give out under the gravity of his guilt. "I thought- I didn't know-"
"Stop it," says Padmé, and all at once she is right beside him, nimble fingers finding his wrists and turning them over in a kind of benediction. "I won't hear you blame yourself for this." Her black eyes are starry with unshed tears, but her jaw is set with purpose. "Anakin is the one who should be sorry. You've been nothing but helpful and kind to him. For kriff's sake, Obi Wan!" She grips his forearms harder, rattling him in frustration. "I am his wife, and even I haven't- been there for him the way you have. You've given him everything. And if he doesn't appreciate that, well then-" She pauses, cheeks reddening with emotion. "Bring him to me, and I'll make him appreciate it!"
Obi Wan sighs. "That's hardly-"
"Listen! What he did to Master Windu-" she huffs, rummaging around for words. "That was violence. Uncalled for- Unacceptable- Things can't go on like this! He must learn- He must be made to understand-" She bites at her bloodless lip in vexation, briefly ducking behind the sumptuous umber river of her hair, before taking a half-step back to look Obi Wan full in the face. "This ends right now!" she cries, jabbing at nothing with one slim index finger. "When my child is born, it will have a father who knows how to behave like a civilized person... Or it will have no father at all!" It is obvious, as she rigidly crosses her arms over her breast, burying a sob, how much it kills her to say these words. The righteous fire has left her eyes, leaving behind only a soot of sadness.
"Oh, Padmé." Obi Wan reaches out, shyly but earnestly, to touch her arm, scarcely able to comprehend her devastation, but filled with admiration at her strength. "Padmé, I- We will set things right, I promise you."
"Make not promises in haste, Obi Wan," says Yoda, striking the tile with his cane. "Ask yourself first whether they can be kept. Confront young Skywalker, you must. But beware: A dark path, he has begun to walk. And bound to him, you are. Your destinies will be the same."
"Yes," Obi Wan nods solemnly. "I know."
"Do you truly know? Realize what is in store, do you?" Yoda snaps. The fall of the Order has taken it's toll, even on him. He looks up with a kind of stark weariness and exasperation which only days ago he probably would have hidden. "Fused together, your souls have become," he says, scrunching and unscrunching his face in wrinkly portent. "Uncontrollable feelings of attachment, you will experience towards each other. Too powerful for any being, no matter how well-trained in the Jedi arts, to resist. Fight these feelings, you cannot- Therefore, only one question remains: Anchor him in the Light, will you? Or be drawn by him into the Darkness?"
"Tell me, Master," pleads Obi Wan, lowering his head in deference.
"Asking you I was!" Yoda sputters, eyes bulging. "A rhetorical question it was not!"
And so, without further discussion, he goes.
The power-outage has plunged the temple corridors into total blackness, with only intermittent warning lights to mark the essential entrances and exits. But Obi Wan would know every centimeter of this building if he were deaf and blind. This has been home for as long as he can remember. Spreading, palatial, cold, marble home.
He reaches out along the golden cord, only to be met with a painful burst of static. He can sense only Anakin's general location- his thoughts and feelings are a brumal blur. Could the boy be blocking him, somehow? To wound him, perhaps. Or else- could it be?- to protect him from the Darkness.
He rounds a corner into another hallway. His vision is filled with nothing but blackness and constellations of red LEDs. His heart is pounding so hard it hurts. But dread and anticipation are just two sides of the same holodisk.
He is nowhere near any windows, and yet he almost fancies he can feel a fresh breeze whispering against his heated face, tossing his damp hair. He gasps, unable to stifle a shiver of pleasure as cool, spectral fingers seem to gently seize his throat and sweep down over his chest. There is no suffocating pain this time, but the Darkness is unmistakable, even in one of it's more... whimsical guises.
Anakin? he tries sending into the void.
Hello, Master.
He is totally unprepared for the violent joy this response kindles in his own heart. Every cell in his body seems to sparkle with feeling. The mind-voice of his beloved former-padawan rings with the promise of renewed oneness, an invitation which he is powerless to refuse.
Oh, Anakin-
Come closer, Master.
At the end of the hallway, he reaches a very large pneumatic door, or rather, a hole in the wall where a pneumatic door would be. With the power out, it wouldn't have opened automatically- but it's been torn from its durasteel frame and cast aside, as if by a creature with hands the size of speeders. He steps through the entrance, emerging into a huge, echoing hangar-bay filled with various light spacecraft. The vulcanized rubber floor muffles the frantic temblor of his footsteps as he traipses across it in singular pursuit of his goal.
"There you are," says Anakin, emerging from behind a ship which he appears to be working on. He stands under a massive spotlight in the middle of the blackness, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. "I knew you'd come," he smiles. He has never looked so cruelly beautiful before.
Obi Wan takes a few steps forward, penetrating the round egg of light, letting the circle enclose them. "Anakin-" he starts, only to be silenced by a bruising kiss. Strong arms wrap around his body, and then he is drowning.
"Shhh..." Anakin whispers into his ear, pressing their faces together. "I know what this is. They sent you after me," he coos, happily carding his fingers through his master's lush hair.
"No, Ana-"
"Shhhhh... It's okay. I knew this would happen."
He steps back, letting Obi Wan stumble away as he drops from his arms. And in a fervid, claustrophobic voice, he begins to speak. "The Chancellor used to say that the day would come when you would be forced to chose between me and the Jedi. And for years, I have lived in fear of that day, and that choice. But today, I'm no longer afraid." His blue eyes are wild with covetousness, his rosy lips twitching their way in and out of a hundred facial expressions. "Because you don't have a choice anymore," he says, simply. And then, with an impossible combination of dark satisfaction and innocent wonder which is so heartbreakingly, characteristically Anakin, that it almost makes Obi Wan weep:
"You are compelled to love me now."