Author's Notes: Found this in my files. May as well upload it.
TW: Suicide and gore. Also, existential crises. No beta so misspelled words and incorrect grammar.
Three for a Wedding
Qui-Gon looks at Obi-Wan and he sees Death.
Death is in Obi-Wan's sea green eyes, lingering in the light that fades. Death is in Obi-Wan's hands, whenever he swings his sabre in fatal arcs of blue. Death is in Obi-Wan's lips, omens and premonitions whispered in dying sighs.
Obi-Wan is fifteen years old, three weeks after his first death, when he dies again.
Bruck wasn't the only one who fell in the rushing waters.
Xanatos escapes, a wolfish grin on his lips, when Qui-Gon and Micah rush to where the bomb is.
Qui-Gon felt it when Obi-Wan drowned, water in his lungs replacing the oxygen. Bant was crying and Obi-Wan's eyes were a dull moss green, unfocused and grey creeping in his veins.
Then he blinks.
Obi-Wan starts coughing out blood and water, on his knees and heaving, but alive.
"Obi-Wan," Bant asks, afraid and unbelieving. "Are you… okay?"
Because they all felt his death in the Force. It was liquid fire in his throat and agony in his chest. It was darkness and coldness in his heart - his essence. He had passed on through the Force, had let go of all his attachments and was already at peace with himself.
Yet here he is, alive and well.
Obi-Wan smiles, water-logged and grey, and then he stands up. Qui-Gon and Bant rush to him, supporting him as he tried to balance on his weakened legs. Much like a newborn gazelle, trembling and weak.
"Let's not do that again."
His eyes are green, bright and poisonous.
There were healer and mind healers, appointment after appointment, trying to understand what happened. Anyone Force sensitive in a fifty kilometre radius felt the life ripped away from the rivers of energy. Everyone Force sensitive felt the resurrection, the soul that became one with the Force return to the realm of living.
Obi-Wan is fine. Physically, at least.
No scars or traces that he died. No brain damage or burst vessels. Obi-Wan is practically good as new.
Emotionally and mentally, however.
Qui-Gon wonders if it's denial when Obi-Wan is… detached. The passion and anger is a lot more subdued, the recklessness is still there, but Obi-Wan is less volatile - less arrogant. Qui-Gon sees it when Obi-Wan isn't breathing for ten minutes straight or notices he is bleeding out.
The worse is when Obi-Wan speaks, Death lingers behind his eyes.
Then, Obi-Wan is sixteen and it's been six months since his second death, seven since his first.
They are in a backwater planet in the midst of a civil war, much like all the other backwater planets torn apart by their own strife.
There are skirmishes and assassination attempts. It was in an ambush when Obi-Wan dies for the third time.
The vibroblade slashes through his throat and into his chest, bone and flesh a torn mess of gore swimming in black blood. Qui-Gon's leg is broken and he accepted that he and Obi-Wan will die in this horrible planet alone and cold and undignified.
Then Obi-Wan stands up, sabre in hand and Death in his hands.
He slashes through rebels and soldiers alike, indiscriminate and effective. Men, women, neither and both died by his hands. Almost painless, the lingering burns of plasma is the last thing they will remember before they died, fear and pain and acceptance.
When the streets overflowed with bodies, the roads coated in blood and flesh, empty eyes skyward and pleading, and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan left standing and alive - when the Jedi backup arrives.
Obi-Wan kneels in a sea of the dead, Death in his eyes and Death in his hands.
"What happened?" It was Clee Rhara they sent, and she has a hand in n her nose to block out the cloying sweetness of burnt flesh. The air is thick and a roiling in miasma of fear and pain and hatred and joy and sorrow and hope and a promise of new beginnings.
Yet Obi-Wan remains untouched by it all.
"Obi-Wan?" Garen asks.
Obi-Wan's shoulders are light and free of burdens. Death is in his eyes and in his shoulders. He is neither Dark nor Light. He simply is.
"There was a world torn apart from a horrible war that the earth was stained red from millions of dead. In a country, they created a weapon so horrible that none lived in the land it touched." Obi-Wan turned to then with his empty poison green eyes and death and bloodless hands.
"Padawan," Qui-Gon called.
Then Obi-Wan blinked and whatever it was that took hold of his body left.
He looked at Garen and Clee Rhara in confusion. "I think I'm going to pass out."
Then he fell forward, cushioned between rotting flesh and cauterised limbs.
Obi-Wan is hyperaware whenever he held a blade, wary of Death in his hands. He walks on eggshells and spars halfheartedly.
Many in the temple had grown wary of Obi-Wan. Death is with him, they silently say in voiceless accusations, in unspoken truths. Death follows him, Qui-Gon sees.
Death is not in the dead bodies Obi-Wan leaves, but in the names in lists. Death is in empty homes and empty graves, in old haunts and unrealised potentials. Death is in what could have been and what will never be.
Yet Death never touches Obi-Wan in the way he touches everything else.
Qui-Gon doesn't want to know what it means. What it could mean.
Obi-Wan is sixteen and it has been three months since his third death, ten months since his first.
"Don't drink the mulled wine with berries," Obi-Wan tells a passing Knight when he and Qui-Gon are returning from a routine mission.
Qui-Gon doesn't question it at first, attributing it to the many quirks since Obi-Wan's first death.
The Knight is rightfully bewildered, yet goes on to his mission. He nods indecisively and he shares the strange encounter with his old master and with his friends.
Three days later, he dies. Poisoned.
He drank mulled wine with berries, the fruits steeped in snake venom.
Many in the Temple thought it's just coincidence, that Obi-Wan couldn't possibly predict death to an accurate degree.
Except it happens again.
And again.
And again.
Death in Obi-Wan's lips, speaking in weeping mourners and tolling bells. In creaking ropes and a falling guillotine.
All in the Temple take heed and care, going to Obi-Wan for omens, and they listen. There were less who died then, but fear of death led to the Jedi coming to depend on a boy just to do anything.
It all comes to a head, one day, when Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon go to Telos, chasing after Xanatos.
They stand in his office, cuffed and audience to theatrics.
"You will jump into a pool of acid and die," Obi-Wan says in a tone that it was absolute truth. Then there is something like pleading in his eyes. "You don't have to do this."
It throws Qui-Gon's apprentice off guard.
There is something like recognition in his blue eyes, a question in his lips. "Old man?"
Obi-Wan shook his head. "No."
Xanatos expression turned into apprehension before shuttering off. He sent both of them away.
In the Sacred Pools of Telos, Xanatos is laughing with the innocence of a child and the mind of a madman when he plunges the sabre through Obi-Wan's chest to his throat, a flicker of regret and pain in his blue eyes.
Except Obi-Wan doesn't fall into a lifeless heap, his heart and lungs a singed mess and his flesh a mass of cauterised meat, rather he remains upright and the blackness spreads across his body. Oranges and lemons seeped into the air, the taste of flowers lingered in Qui-Gon's mouth.
Obi-Wan turns and his eyes are bright and green, and his mouth echoed with dying sighs and pained screams. His skin is too pale and stretched taught across his bones, the shadows clung to him and Death is in his eyes and mouth and hands.
"Why didn't you come back?" the voices of the dead spoke in Obi-Wan's mouth. "We were waiting for you beyond the station, beyond the veil."
Xanatos looks pale and terrified, guilt and confusion and sorrow and longing in his eyes. "What are you?"
"We looked for you, but you weren't there at all."
There was sorrow and someone else behind Obi-Wan's eyes. "Oh, I've waited so long for you. I missed you so much. Why didn't you want to be with us?"
Something clicked and Xanatos sagged, defeated. "I wanted to go back… but I thought you wouldn't want me. After everything."
"Oh, you will always be welcome home."
A wolfish grin splits across Xanatos face, yet there were tears in his eyes and grief raging in his soul. "I've hidden and ran away for so long, that I don't know how to."
"But you do know, Sirius."
The world spins in and out of focus, and the pools turn into doors that stretch beyond the skies, the heavens close into a heavy vaulted ceiling, the catwalk morph into a raised dais full of strange symbols emitting a white glow.
Stone pillars rise and curves and meets into an arch and a veil flutters into the wind. The moon illuminates the translucent cloth from the skylight and it falls over Obi-Wan and casts his skin in soft blue.
Claws drag across Obi-Wan's skin and he bleeds black. A heavy tiredness settles over his shoulders and sets sorrow in his soul.
"Let's go home."
Xanatos's looks tired and relieved and accepting all at once.
Qui-Gon sees Obi-Wan, dying and living, a box with a cat that's alive and dead and not alive and not dead. Xanatos sees home.
The veil flutters over them and Xanatos is gone.
Obi-Wan turns to Qui-Gon and his eyes are bright and green and he smiles a sepulcher smile, all teeth and broken necks. "It said that a horrible war let horrible men do horrible things. They said that these men created a weapon so horrible that it was less a god and more of an idea. They said it was how a god transcended even godhood."
"Whoever you are, stop this!"
"They said, "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds", and so they are." Then they are no longer in the stone room and its stone archways. They are in Telos, and it it's Xanatos' burning flesh that fills the room, muscles and skin and innards eaten away by acid.
Then Obi-Wan drops to the catwalk, precariously close to falling next to Qui-Gon's old apprentice.
Xanatos death echoes in the Force like an old forgotten lullaby, his pain and agony washed away by relief and acceptance. His death was returning home rather than ripping a wound open.
Obi-Wan's death in the Force – and finally, finally Qui-Gon knew – is him fading and gone. Except, Obi-Wan comes back, but he doesn't. Obi-Wan comes back in bits and pieces, in jigsaw cuts and uneven edges, Obi-Wan comes back ripped apart and then glued together in torn edges. The culmination of his being torn apart at the seams, broken down to nothing, and rebuilt in half-remembered moments and blurry recollections. Obi-Wan breaks into tiny pieces and returns into a semblance of Obi-Wan. Made from the same pieces, but not the same, hairline cracks in his being.
"Obi-Wan?" Qui-Gon asks, holding his apprentice and laying him up. The wounds are gone, no scars nor burns to serve as a reminder.
"Death is permanent," Obi-Wan mumbles, and his eyes are a relieving shade of stormy grey. "You cannot un-die."
"But you're alive right now." Qui-Gon hefts the boy in his arms, ready to leave this place. "If there's anyone making a mess of the natural order of life, I suppose I can always ask you."
Obi-Wan laughs half-hearted, an aborted attempt in expression. "But see, when I died, I can't be who I was before I died. No matter how hard I try, no matter how much I glue myself back together – I can't."
"People change Obi-Wan, it's not that different – "
"No. This is different because it's not just me. It's everything else. Something has to change, something has to give. Instead, we are stuck in a dream that never ends, shifting in and out of reality yet it remains static. Our perceptions change when we dream and wake up, but we're not waking up."
Qui-Gon couldn't see what Obi-Wan could possibly be talking about. Obi-Wan is alive, and that's what matters, right?
"Obi-Wan, you are being far too cryptic, and you are still a padawan. I don't see what this has to do with anything."
"But it does with everything." Obi-Wan looks away, his eyes starlight blue. He sees beyond the stars and the vastness of space, of the never ending cycle of destruction and creation and understands. "When someone dies, we can't undo it. Since we can't undo it, we have to live on without them. Their memories and culmination as a person and sense of self linger in things we associate with them, memory and objects, physical and metaphysical."
"I don't understand." Truly, Qui-Gon doesn't. The Living Force matters in the here and now, in the present. This wasn't a study in understanding their emotions and overcoming or coming into terms with them. This is not the understanding of how it binds all living beings together and brings peace into one's self and into others. This is not the Living Force as Qui-Gon knows it.
"There is no meaning and it has meaning. What Death touches, it's for forever. Even the bereaved can find hope in sorrow. What Death takes from me, can't be returned," Obi-Wan says in dying sighs and Qui-Gon sees Death in his lips. His breath was sweet and tangy, much like citrus and spider lilies.
Obi-Wan then turns away and his eyes fade. All his energies drain out and he falls asleep, falls into the waking death.
"He has a good heart still," and Death is there where there is none. He doesn't shift from the shadows or announce his arrival in glamorous entrances. He creeps and lingers, he stalks and follows, and then he comes when no one wants him.
"What did you do to him?" Qui-Gon holds his apprentice closer. He wants answers. Whatever Obi-Wan believes, there is still hope for him. There is still hope that Death's hands won't linger forever.
Death hums the ringing of heavy bells, the footsteps of mourners and shovels digging into the earth. The sweetness of flowers lingers in the air and Qui-Gon can taste thick honey on the back of his tongue.
Death steps forward and Qui-Gon steps back, but his feet does not move and his hands do not tremble.
Death takes Obi-Wan's hand and inserts a ring on his second finger. The stone is heavy and black, with a simple engraving and the whispers of the dead.
"What did you-"
Except Death is leaving and Qui-Gon still cannot move. He wants to take shake and scream at Death, demand him to undo whatever spell he cast on Obi-Wan, to undo this horrible attachment where Death lingers in Obi-Wan's eyes and hands and lips. To stop Obi-Wan's eyes lose their light or bring death to others or whisper with dying sighs and empty smiles.
The world stops and Qui-Gon stops with it.
Then, Death is gone and the world goes and Qui-Gon falls into step. He stumbles but doesn't fall, the memory of Death already fading into the shadows chasing sunlight.
When Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan return to the Temple, they spend three months recovering from the fiasco from Telos.
There are no answers, only questions.
Obi-Wan is subdued and sorrowful, but his eyes aren't poison green and he waters plants that don't die and he laughs and smiles with his friends.
He doesn't fill the air with dread and he doesn't prophesice deaths. He doesn't smell of blood on upturned earth or oranges stuffed in carcasses. He doesn't speak in omens or whisper death is coming. Life goes on as if nothing happened, that Obi-Wan's actions and words have not left their mark on the Temple or on his friends.
Qui-Gon never understood what it truly meant, not until he is looking at Obi-Wan and he sees Death behind his eyes and he is dying in every passing moment.
It is ten years after Obi-Wan's first death, and three days later when Death comes to collect his payment.
"Train the boy," Qui-Gon says and understands that in his death, nothing can be undone. He can return as an essence from the Force, and yet his death wouldn't be true or final at all.
Qui-Gon can feel Death's hands when he gathers all his will and doesn't die. He sees that death is ceasing to be, to cease all attachments and accept the nothingness. By letting go of himself, Qui-Gon will not find a way to return at all. He sees the universe and he sees it tilt in the Dark Side of the Force, and he needs to return, because his purpose is to touch the realm of the living. Why would one return to influence the material world if one did not have material interests?
"Promise me," Qui-Gon begs and Obi-Wan promises, daisies and poppies thick in Obi-Wan's words.
Qui-Gon almost smiles as Death calls for him and he does not answer.
He looks above and sees the sun filtering through the skylight. Qui-Gon holds on to the hope of balance and Light's triumph and the Will of the Force and stays. His spirit and essence leaves his body of flesh and blood, yet his soul rides on the waves of the Force, his energies spreading across the rivers of Light – and alive.
Three magpies fly away.
Author's Notes: Three guesses on who convinces Xanatos to jump.
Planning on making a one-shot where Tom and Anakin talk about being dark lords and chosen ones. Also, I didn't get to write much meta about fate and destiny. I'm content though that I managed to write meta on how Force Ghosts work.
It's kinda baffling that in order to interact with the physical realm (debatable tho) or pretty much talk to living people through the Force is to let go of attachments. May include interest in the wellbeing of the galaxy. But the thing is, shouldn't one anchor themselves into the living world to interact with it? Ghost stories pretty much say there is unfinished business, or perceived unfinished business. Yet becoming Force Ghosts means letting go of unfinished business and accepting that nothing can be done with it post-humously. I get that it means that Force Ghost is much more emotionally stable and all that, but by letting go – nothing should be keeping them back here other than unfinished business. So yeah, baffling Force Stuff with me.
Also, EldritchAbomination/HorrorArchetype!Obi-Wan or AbstractApothesis!Obi-Wan, I actually have always wanted to write one of those. So yeah, pretty fun stuff.
