Shades of Gray
Chapter 9
The skylight ruptured into falling shards, disintegrating beneath the power of his fury and the seething Force. Anankin launched himself through the opening, landing on a thick carpeted floor inside the dim apartment's vast lounge. His saber thrummed hot in his hand, thirsty for justice, for a restitution of right and order. Its blue light cut clean and bright through the shadowy grays of the penthouse, through the lies and compromises surrounding this whole affair. Now was the moment of truth and reckoning.
There were only two people in the room, crouched on the floor, close together – too close together to be anything but lovers. The woman spun about to face him when he landed, her delicate features drawn into a tight scowl, one hand wrapped about a blaster's hilt with the casual ease born of long practice.
"Where's Lenn?" Anakin demanded, weapon humming loudly, angled between them. He would deflect any shot she fired right back into her body.
She tossed her silky mane of white-gold back over one shoulder, looked him up and down. "Well," she remarked, not intimidated. "So Jedi do do assassinations."
"Where is he?" Anakin repeated, taking a threatening step forward. If she thought he was above taking down a woman, she had never seen him in action against Ventress. War didn't leave room for such mincing courtesies.
The platinum haired woman smiled sardonically. "Thought you could read minds and all that, hot-shot." She backed toward the bedroom doors, keeping the blaster trained on the invader.
"Uun. Get Lenn out of here. I'll deal with this."
Anakin's blood froze. And in the instant it took him to regain his wits, the other occupant of this shadowed enclave stepped forward to stand a mere two meters from Anakin, as the woman slipped into the room beyond.
"I – I – master!" Words formed and then shattered, ephemeral sparks in his mind. "What are you doing?" He held his blade downward, toward the floor, reeling with the shock of it, with the strange disturbance eddying around Obi Wan in the Force, an awful distortion of his familiar presence, a twisted and tormented aura, tinged with smearing crimsons.
"There you are," Obi Wan said, in a softly dangerous voice Anakin had never once heard addressed to himself, even in the moment of his most egregious violation, his most reckless defiance. "I've been waiting for you a long, long time."
There was something terribly wrong with Obi Wan. Anakin backpedaled one step, heart clenching in his chest, cold adrenaline washing through his limbs. And what in the hells was his master doing in here? With that – that woman? In those clothes?
"Out of my way," he warned. "I'm dealing with Lenn."
"No," Obi Wan corrected him, with a quiet eagerness that heralded the beginning of a life and death battle. "You're dealing with me."
Anakin flourished his blade high, in an angry circle. "Master!" he shouted. "What's wrong with you! What in the kriff are you doing?"
But apparently negotiation was not an option. In the next moment, Anakin's own humming blade was matched by another pulsing line of blue plasma. The Force roared, churned into a maelstrom, a thunderstorm of power circling the two Jedi.
Anakin felt dizzy. He was here to stop a vile murdering criminal. Obi Wan – the Council – the Order – was standing in his way, blocking him, holding him back, upholding evil and disorder. He was betrayed, they were betrayers, they were hypocrites and liars and traitorous soulless loveless pawns of a corrupt system. The Force spun around him, screamed with his outrage, with Obi Wan's swiftly-mounting tension, with immiment deadly attack. This was wrong, and crazy and-
-there wasn't time to think. Obi Wan moved first, saber howling as he leapt forward into a blinding attack, defensive center abandoned in favor of devastating aggression. Anakin blocked, and blocked again, blood exploding with rage, with resentment. He fought with his envy, with his jealously, with his fear, defending himself from blows, from criticism, from distrust, from authority. The sabers hammered and spun, clashed spitting and hissing together, tore the air to hot shreds, tore furniture to smoldering ruin, carved ruinous scars upon carpet and floors. Obi Wan's blade seared a hot burn along the outside of his shoulder; his answering strike nearly took off an ear. Sweat streamed into Anakin's eyes, stung them and blurred the battle into a salty miasma. The Force erupted with confusion and pain and desperation. They clashed, fell apart, growled and flung themselves into the fray again.
Anakin backflipped over the wreck of a silken couch. "Obi Wan!" he hollered. He was going to kill the man if this didn't stop. "Master!"
The answer was a Force push that sent him catapulting backward into the wall. Breath left his body; he fell to the floor, grunting, fingers clawing frantically for his dropped saber hilt. Obi Wan was descending upon him like a thunderbolt, blue fire tearing through the darkness, implacable.
Anakin kicked out, hard, catching Obi Wan hard in the ribs and sending him crashing into the wall. He grunted in pain, and the Force sparked with vibrant distress. Panting, Anakin twisted round, kicked his foe's weapon out of the way, grappled with Obi Wan. They writhed, rolled, threw punches. Obi Wan caught him in his injured knee. Screaming, he doubled over, only to be thrown hard into the wall. Anger flared white –hot; he Force-pinned Obi Wan beneath him, slammed his prosthetic hand into the injured rib. There was a crack, and a hoarse yell of pain. Anakin pressed a knee into his friend's chest, hands crushing into his wrists. "Stop it! Master! Stop!"
Obi Wan fought with every scrap of strength he possessed...but the thing was stronger. Its power grew and multiplied into a dizzying torrent, a wedding of light and darkness, an infinite sea of twilight grays, bottomless limbos of torment and suffering. It had fallen through the skylight like a meteroite, like a dark star descending to wreak havoc on the world below; and in the first moment of beholding it, he had felt the veil torn asunder, the obscuring shroud of the Dark side lifted at last to reveal its legions in full battle array. A hellish dawn broke through the lingering dusk, premonition melting into harsh reality, reality into living nightmare, the rising sun a black hole which sucked the crimson-smeared world into itself, into destruction, into nothingness. He beheld the enemy, the horrible truth lying in ambush just beyond the ramparts of the future, the One they had been looking for.
It had come for him. And he stood alone.
And he had fought, with every bleeding, broken scrap of strength he possessed...but the thing was stronger. It was infinitely stronger.
This monster – this thing of shadows and clotted blood, the hidden enemy always waiting beyond his inner horizon, the thing that defined every premonition, every bad feeling - was crushing him, pressing the breath out of his lungs, its metallic claws closing round his wrists, pinning him down. Pain blossomed, delicate flowers of pleasure-agony, rippling outward from his broken rib to his belly and chest, a fire that ripped a strange hole in the smearing tapestry of scarlet. The thing of shadows was screaming at him, its voice melting in the winds, the hurricane of sound and light and motion, the swirling clouds of smoke billowing off the molten world. Waves of heat washed over him, consuming his flesh; he twisted, arched backward, anything to escape the excruciating ecstasy.
But the shadow-thing only pressed harder, chaining him in the inferno, crushing him. Its face was smeared into tattered ribbons of light and dark, a cowl of smoke and illusions. He couldn't defeat it; he had been foolish to try. Its screams transformed to howling laughter, and the wisping veils were blown apart by its hot breath. There was no human face there at all, only a battered skull sheathed in a plasteel mask, and robotic limbs sprouting grotesquely beneath. It was Greivous and Maul and Dooku and Ventress and something more, something…elusive. The thing he had been looking for, seeking in the Force, for so many, many years, the shadow behind the shadows, the lord behind the servants, the darkness behind the fallen stars.
"Obi Wan!"
It knew him, but he had no name for it. It held the high ground.
"Master!"
It couldn't be. He begged the Force not to let it be…but the Force was deaf to his pleas, eluding his grasp, turning its back on him, leaving him alone with this awful, unbidden truth..
"Obi Wan!"
The thing spoke with Anakin's voice. He looked up into the wraith's face, into the fire-ringed mask, the empty sockets, caverns of hate in which fire kindled darkly, and saw Anakin….Anakin's skull, streaked with clinging fragments of blood and charred flesh, crowned with an invisible halo of wrath, the lightless corona of the Dark. And that was when the Force abandoned him utterly, and his heart broke and he sobbed with boundless, feverish denial and terror.
The world sank beneath the tide of despair and melted into nothingness…and he welcomed its obliterating embrace.
Anakin staggered upright, his back hitting the wall. He gasped in a few heaving breaths, staring in disbelief at the pathetic wreck of a man lying unconscious at his feet. He gritted his teeth, fighting down a deep howl of confusion and despair. Nothing made sense…. nothing was as it should be.
Lenn.
The doors lay just beyond. The golden-haired woman had gone to help Lenn escape. He was across the room in a single bound, hammering at the doors. They did not yield. He summoned the Force's limitless power and wrenched them open, tearing the hydraulics out of their sockets in a shower of sparks.
Inside, two blue-complected Twi'Leks shrilled in abject terror and dove behind the massive central sleep platform. A cold draught whipped at his cloak hem – an open balcony door. Landing pad. Private speeder. The transparisteel panes shattered beneath his onslaught, and then he was in the light-fretted air of Coruscuant's night, perched on a thin docking strip outside the balcony doors. Lenn was already inside the aircar, beneath its protective canopy, the strange woman only a pace away.
She pivoted, fired off three shots at him. He deflected them, sending them spattering out into the night, among the whizzing traffic lanes.
The woman hissed, and her beautiful face melted away, a dull grey-green reptile's snout appearing where pale ivory had been a moment before.
"Back off, Jedi," she snarled. "Lenn's my kill."
His heart skipped a beat. His saber thrummed loud, still angled across his body.
She backed up a step, toward the speeder, blaster gripped hard in one hand. "I've been trying to hit him for two days. Tonight is my night. Kriff off, Jedi I was here first, and I've got more reasons to hate him."
He stood, and the cold wind whipped at his cloak, lifted his hair and wicked the sweat off his forehead. Traffic flowed in endless lines above. Lenn was pounding on the aircar's canopy with one fat hand, panicked, ready to leave.
The Clawdite took another step backward. She hesitated. "You didn't kill Ben, did you?" she asked.
Ben? Did she mean Obi Wan? "No."
"Good." Another step. Lenn was frantic, shouting at her from the interior of his vehicle.
Anakin stood suspended in a pool of blue luminance, the bright etching of his blade. He watched the murderess slowly step onto the aircar's footboard, hesitate, eyes fixed on him, watching his every move.
His blade disappeared as he powered it down. He stepped backward, into shadow.
Shree Uun nodded once, holstered her own weapon, popped the canopy and slid into the pilots' seat beside Lenn. In a moment, the sleek aircar had careened off into the night.
Anakin's teeth were chattering. He felt bile rise in his throat, and he swallowed it down. He shouldn't have done that…he was a Jedi. But he had done nothing. And yet he had come to commit the same act, had he not? Lenn was a vile excrescence of the lowest hells, wasn't he? His rage cooled, and hardened into a lump in his throat. He replaced the saber at his side with shaking hand, the night wind now chilling him.
"Master," he groaned.
He stumbled back through the wrecked balcony doors, across the bedroom. The Twi'Leks cringed and whimpered as he passed, their hands clutching at long ornamented lekku. The bedroom doors hung open, random sparks still spurting from the ruined housing. Ozone and the scent of charred fibers filled the air. He pushed the shredded couch aside and knelt down.
Obi Wan was drenched in sweat, yet cold to the touch. He looked worse now than he had dead, at his own funeral….Another howl began its trembling ascent within Anakin's chest, and he choked it down. His fingers found the thin, frantic pulse, the place where his vicious punch had fractured a rib. The Force churned sloppily around them, warped and disturbed – with much more than physical pain.
Drugs? A cold pit settled in his stomach. Lenn's spice. Or deathsticks. Or both. Suicide, either way you figured it. What in the kriff had Obi Wan been thinking? What had he been doing? Anger swelled anew, carrying disgust on its rising crest. He gritted his teeth, fighting down another howl, a cry of rebellion against nameless powers and principalities. The Council was to blame. They had sent Obi Wan in here, on some perverse mission to save a wicked man from well-deserved death. They had used him, the way he had used Anakin. They sacrificed their own to save a kriffing murderer. In the name of peace and justice.
He hated…..them. It. Everything.
Somewhere outside, distantly, an emergency claxon wailed in the aftermath of an air collision. Cold air wafted in from the open balcony beyond, snaking through the gutted rooms.
Chilled to the bone, he lifted Obi Wan over his shoulders and left. It was over.