Two

It felt as if I would never get Padmé's ship off Mustafar, let alone into hyperspace. I couldn't seem to get my mind to function, couldn't induce my fingers to input the correct codes into the navicomputer. I wasn't even certain what the correct codes were. Where should I go? Where in the galaxy could I take them—a badly injured Sith Lord and an unconscious Senator bearing his children? I chose the nearest Republic system with a low military presence nearly at random and prayed for the Force to somehow guide me through this.

"See-Threepio," I murmured wearily, "put through a communication to Senator Organa and Master Yoda, will you?" He responded, of course, and at length as usual, but I didn't hear him beyond the affirmative answer, my thoughts and gaze already focused on the HoloNet viewscreen as I rehearsed what I could possibly say.

"Master Kenobi?" Organa appeared on screen. "Is that you?"

"Yes, it's me." I cast about for some way to describe my situation. Nothing in my vocabulary seemed adequate. "I—I have Senator Amidala and . . . Darth Vader with me. I'm leaving the Mustafar system now and am on my way to a planet called Elanna. It's on the fringes of Republic space, but it has no military presence and a grade-A medical facility according to the computer. It's small, out of the way—remote enough that they might not yet have gotten any news from Coruscant."

"We'll meet you there," Organa assured me. He hesitated. "You say you have both Skywalker—Vader—and Senator Amidala?"

"I do. I'll explain on Elanna. Please relay this message to Master Yoda."

"I will. Elanna, then, Master Kenobi." The message ended with a crackle of static, and I leaned back wearily in the seat, feeling a crushing burden of responsibility settle onto my shoulders, into my stomach. Suddenly I felt a thousand years old and more tired than I had ever been. I let my eyes slide closed, just for a moment.

"Are you quite all right, Master Kenobi?" See-Threepio's prissy tones cut into my fogged mind like a vibroblade through transparisteel. "You seem to be rather . . . tired."

I opened my eyes and pushed myself out of the co-pilot's seat. "You fly the ship, See-Threepio," I ordered, then turned and headed for the corridor that lead to the starship's limited medical facilities where I had left Anakin and Padmé.

"Well, I was merely asking a question. You don't have to react like that. Sometimes I just don't understand humans," I heard him respond in a plaintive tone as the door slid shut behind me.

Droids. I knew I would never be able to comprehend Anakin's affection for them.

I keyed open the door and crossed the small room to Padmé's side to lay my hand on her shoulder. I just stood there for a moment, staring down at her unconscious form, and felt a wave of sickening, dizzying guilt wash over me. What would have happened if I hadn't come along with her? Would she have been all right? Anakin loved her, of that I no longer had any doubt, even as the monster he had become.

I had failed him. Failed her. As a Master, as a Jedi, as—

Her eyes fluttered open and focused slowly on me. "Obi-Wan," she whispered. "Obi-Wan, is—is Anakin all right?"

I didn't know how to answer. I touched her cheek with the back of my hand and struggled to find the words, for she deserved an explanation. "I—" I started, and couldn't finish the sentence. "I . . . brought him with us, Padmé, but—I don't know. I just—don't know."

"He's . . . here?" she asked, and her face changed infinitesimally but completely, as if some tiny spark of light had come back into her eyes. "Ani's here?" She turned her head and glanced around the room. Looking for him. "Where, Obi-Wan? Where—where is he?"

I laid both of my hands on her shoulders to soothe her. "Quiet, Padmé. He is . . . sleeping. In the other room. But . . . he is . . . not well. Physically or mentally. I—" I just couldn't finish, couldn't find the words, and I so let the sentence trail off and stood there, my head bowed.

She laid one hand over mine on her shoulder. "Obi-Wan," she said softly. "I know there is good in him. I know there is . . . still." Her eyes closed. "The man I love . . . he's not . . . gone."

I could feel it when she eased into true sleep and disengaged my hand from hers as unobtrusively as I could, not wanting to disturb her again. Still, I couldn't keep myself from laying one hand against her swollen belly, reaching out to the Force to touch the presence of the new lives within her. Padmé's children . . . Anakin's children . . . . There was hope and light in the tiny lives growing beneath my hands, and that was something I sorely needed at the moment.

I leaned down and pressed a soft kiss against her forehead, praying the light touch wouldn't wake her but needing to make the gesture, if only for my own sake. I closed my eyes for one moment more, then straightened up, turning away. She seemed as if she would be all right until we reached Elanna, and I had to check on . . . on Vader.

Artoo tootled uncertainly at me from where he waited by the side of Vader's bed as I entered the other room. For a moment I thought I could hear concern and sadness to mirror my own in the tentative whistle, but then I shook my head at myself. I was imagining things, a sign of the stress I was under, most likely. Droids don't have feelings. "Thanks for watching him, Artoo," I said, and the little droid warbled an acknowledgment. "Go keep an eye on Padmé now."

The droid blatted at me as if unhappy with the order, but he then whistled the affirmative I had come to recognize and rolled out of the room to find her. I took a deep breath and turned to the man before me on the starship's small bunk.

He lay on his stomach, pretty much as I had left him. I hadn't dared to peel the melted leather and charred cloth away from his back after carrying him onto the starship—I didn't know anything about treating burns like this, after all—but I could see his blistered skin, tortured by unnatural heat even now, in places where the clothing had burned away completely. The rasping sound of his breathing, hoarse, labored, worried me, for it sounded as if he was struggling merely to inhale and exhale. His mechanical hand dangled off the side of the bed, still sparking dangerously, something else I hadn't dared do anything about, but his real hand rested beside him on the flat pillow, his fingers curled into a fist against the cloth. He seemed to be asleep, as I had told Padmé, but it wasn't the healing, restful slumber those words implied. Even in unconsciousness his face was twisted in a mask of pain, his brow lined and creased with agony.

I sat down on the small swivel seat beside the bunk and laid my fingers against his forehead. His skin still felt hot beneath my hand, as if carrying him away from the brink of the lava hadn't been enough and he still burned with fire. He moaned slightly as I touched him, his mouth tightening with lines of pain, and tossed his head against the pillow.

I winced. I couldn't just leave him there like that. The burns on his back would dehydrate him and eventually fester in deadly infection if I didn't do something. I closed my eyes and reached out to the Force, wrapping it around him as I had back on Mustafar. Again, he sighed and relaxed.

I took a deep breath and steadied his shoulder with one hand. With the other I reached down and began the process of easing the ruined tunic away from his back as best I could. He flinched, murmuring something in Huttese into the pillow. I was used to him reverting to the language he had spoken on Tatooine whenever he was hurt or sick and disregarded his fevered mutterings—I had always had the feeling he used Huttese to curse so I wouldn't realize what he was saying and scold him for his language. The memory of him as my Padawan made my eyes blur, and I had to stop in my task for a moment.

The burned, blistered skin my efforts revealed twisted my stomach up in knots—the knowledge that it was I who had done this to him made me feel physically ill. I finally pulled the charred remnants of his tunic down to his waist, then got up to clean my hands and returned to his side, reaching for the medpac I kept on my utility belt. Disinfectant burn cream was standard issue, and it should keep him stable until we landed on Elanna. I began to spread the cream over the worst of the injuries on his back. The muscles in his arm clenched as I touched him, the servos in his mechanical hand whirred, as if he was trying to lift it, but the melted slag that was all that was left didn't stir. "Easy, Anakin," I murmured. "Easy."

A tremor passed through his entire body, and his eyes snapped open. He shook as he gasped for breath, deep, painful breaths that shuddered through him like spasms. His face tightened with pain; his good hand closed into a tight fist in the cloth of the sheet beneath him. "Padmé," he said in a tone hoarse with pain and desperation. His voice faded and broke, and it was almost physically painful to watch his cracked lips form the words. "Where . . . where's Padmé? Is she . . . all right . . .?"

Each of them asked about the other first, even now. Something in me ached. "She's fine, Anakin," I told him quietly.

At the sound of my voice his eyes flew up. Yellow fury blazed in his face. "You," he snarled. His rage seemed to emanate from him, making the air shimmer around him, like a mirage born of the heat of his anger. A long torrent of mangled Huttese and Basic I had no hope whatsoever of understanding followed, but I could feel his fury as if it were a living thing poisoning the very air between us.

"Anakin, I'm not trying to hurt you," I said desperately.

His face twisted into a horrible mask of his usual features. "Liar!" he howled in a deafening roar that seemed as if it could not possibly come from a body as weak and battered as his. The air around him surged into a flickering field of red, and I was physically lifted and slammed into the wall by a hand of pure power. I smashed into the bulkhead behind me so hard I think I must have blacked out for a moment, then fell. I could feel my leg twist under me as I landed.

Gasping with shock and pain, I pulled myself to a sitting position and passed a hand over my eyes in an effort to clear my vision. Anakin was crumpled helplessly on the bunk, his breath sobbing painfully in his lungs, his good hand clenching and unclenching into a fist on the thin pillow beside him. His head shot up again as I struggled to my feet and limped to the bed, and I could see tears streaking his cheeks even as his unnatural yellow eyes burned in his face like the moon we had just left come to life in his eyes. "Get . . . away . . . from me!" he gasped, face working, and it was half command, half plea.

"Anakin," I tried, feeling as if my heart had been torn out of my chest all over again at seeing that hate-filled gaze so alien to face of the man I knew turned on me. My voice broke.

"You betrayed me!" The Force spasmed around him. I could see waves of purest rage coalescing around his helpless, prone body, even though he sounded as if one more word would be enough to break him in two. "You . . . betrayed me, Master!"

"I'm . . . sorry, Anakin." It was all I could manage to get out. "I never meant . . . for it to come to this."

"Get . . . away . . . from me!" he repeated, voice tightening and deepening into a roar of fury. The Force around him rippled dangerously.

I obeyed, no longer seeing any point in staying when he wouldn't even let me get near him, and turned my back as I left the room, keying the door closed behind me before I staggered helplessly over to lean against a nearby bulkhead. I covered my face with my hand and realized only belatedly that I was shaking.

If there was still good in him, it was not visible to me, and the pain of it felt as if it had torn my very soul asunder.

What had I done?