XX. Only What You Take With You

Obi-Wan…there is good in him…I know…there is still…

In the darkness of the Falcon's smuggling compartments, he had nearly slipped away. All the strength had faded from his limbs. The drought-blasted heart, the scorched arteries ruined by the patient desert, screamed out for rest. The hungry sands, ten billion years old, still waited for him to die. He had brought the boy as far as he dared—as far, perhaps, as the Force needed him to. He had returned to his place of bliss. He had made his peace, or tried to. He had resigned himself to the end.

And yet, Ben Kenobi did not die.

His face burned, still shining red from where the heat of the lava had scorched it even from six feet away. He watched her with cold horror as she lay on the medical platform as if already dead, weaker of body—and worse, spirit—than he had ever seen her. There was a coldness in her, a hollowness that defied all reason. The Polis Massa asteroid field held the most sophisticated medical droids in the Outer Rim; yet they were baffled by the sickness in her that went deeper than blood and bone.

"She's dying?" Obi-Wan asked, incredulous.

"For reasons we cannot explain, she has lost the will to live," said one of the droids. It struck Obi-Wan then, and Ben now, as the most supremely stupid thing ever said in the history of the galaxy. He wanted to tear the medical droid's head from its body. But Master Yoda was there, watching him, and he was careful not to want it too deeply.

Obi-Wan had felt the full blast of Dooku's Force lightning, and it was no mere jolt or sudden shock. He had been thrown against electrical barriers on his adventures, and stunned by high-voltage wires, and tormented by shock probes. From the outside, Force lightning looked like that. But within him, it had torn an invisible chasm; it was a direct attack to the soul, a maiming so profound that the blazing electrical discharge was nearly an afterthought to its power. Even a moment's exposure left a darkness in you that took a long time to appear, much less to heal.

He felt that darkness festering in her now. Her delicate, birdlike throat had been nearly crushed by Vader's grip—but the Sith Lord had crushed deeper and truer things than that. She was overwhelmed by his darkness, a darkness that had poured out of him and straight into her innermost heart. She fought not to purge it from her, but to contain it—to keep it, perhaps, from poisoning Anakin's child.

This was a sickness beyond medicine. It was killing her, and he was watching it. As he watched it through the ages, a terrible anger stirred in him. And he did not die.

Rise, said the Dark Side. Ben rose.

Can you feel him?

Ben could feel him.

He is searching for you.

Let him find me. Let him come.

Feel the power of his hatred. He is still strong, very strong.

Yes. Will you make me strong?

I will make you stronger.

He's too powerful. He was the Chosen One. His blood was so strong.

He has wasted his potential. He is a machine, severed from life. You are wise, whole, perfected. You could be a greater warrior than Vader. Greater than Sidious, even.

This—this is what ancient Dooku must have felt in the bloodthirsty grip of Makashi. The pain evaporated from his joints. A terrible strength came flooding back to them.

The Imperials are weak. It has been nineteen years since they faced a Jedi. And now they are trapped on this metal moon with you.

I could kill them all.

Give yourself to me, said the Dark Side. We can stop them together. I will make you swift and terrible. I will teach you my secrets. I will unlock your full potential, and this time you will not fail her. You will not fail the galaxy.

Ben took a ragged breath, calmed himself. In his mind, Obi-Wan stood at Padmé's bedside, clutching her cold hand.

"I do not need you," he whispered.

Yes you do. You're a dead man, Obi-Wan. You came to your peace. Only your anger, your hatred, are what keep you alive now.

He shut out the voice, but could not silence Padmé's screams.

They kept him on his feet. They gripped his heart, squeezed it, pumped it. Then again.

There was no lying to himself; he knew where his strength was coming from, and for what purpose. His saber was out, but he dared not lash out at the troopers. Giving in to the Dark Side would send up a powerful beacon to the Sith Lord, and he was not ready for that. With supreme gentleness, old Ben walked among them as he had been taught. He sensed them, moved with them, breathed in the life force around him. Fewer of the troopers than he expected were of clone stock, now. Even in this skeletal place, the Living Force was strong. Even the so-called Death Star was teeming with human life. Even between his soul and Vader's, the threads of that energy were spun.

He shut down the tractor beam generator for sector N6—a simple enough task, now—and then answered the final call: The darkness in him was calling him on to Vader. And the shred of light in Vader's tattered soul, perhaps, called him on to Obi-Wan as well.

He followed that force. They circled each other, a mile apart—then half a mile. He brushed past unwitting stormtroopers in the hallway, and they felt only coldness. They were nothing to him now.

His step quickened. Vader's stride was slow, laboured. Was he—yes, he was heavily armoured. Of course, he would have to be. He was slow and clumsy now; Obi-Wan felt it. Even in the dessicated shell of his own corpse, Obi-Wan could be faster. He could be stronger. The Force would give him the strength to kill this one last time.

Its energy flared in him. He channeled the memories that would bring him into his anger.

The boy, Luke, was born as she lay dying. Even as her life left her, he watched as she protected the child from the creeping darkness inside her. His loathing for Vader was complete—but in the moment he held the boy, as much as he willed it, his hatred for the father did not, would not pass to the son.

The conflict was powerful. Always he came back to this place when his thoughts turned to revenge. But in that place, in that cold funereal moment, there was so much light in them. Even in that moment, the very source of his festering hate, there was too much love to turn him.

She screamed anew as the second babe was born. This one was smaller, less furious in her arrival. She had waited to be born last, and she endured her passage into the world with a quiet grace.

"It's a girl," he said, astonished.

Padmé strained to meet the child's face. She only needed to look on it a moment—then, she met his eyes.

"Leia," she said simply—and that name was enough. Through the mask of pain, she smiled at the eyes, and he knew the truth.

Leia's presence in his arms. This feeling. It was this moment he had not allowed himself to remember.

He gave her to Bail Organa, in the end. He knew the hardship that awaited Anakin's boy in his care. He would not have it for her. He could not bear it. She would grow up as the princess of a prosperous world, a world completely at peace, in the house of the noblest man Obi-Wan knew outside of the Order. She would want for nothing. She would be safe. And perhaps, one day—

He felt her fear, now, suddenly, very close by. Of course. Vader had found her. She was here.

The Dark Side gnawed angrily at him as he watched Padmé die, as he had watched it in his nightmares for twenty years, as the greatness of his failure wore him down to hollowness and regret. But he brushed it away with a thought. She was here. Luke was here. The last legacy of Padmé was here on this battle station with him.

He had to protect them—had to see them to safety. Their lives were more important even than Vader's death. It was in that moment he let all thought of revenge slip away. He understood at last Yoda's shame, Yoda's folly. The anger left him in a cool rush, in a single breath—and all the strength of the Dark Side went with it.

Obi-Wan slumped against the durasteel wall of the corridor, his body reeling as the cruel force that had held it together began to fade. Old Ben, the dark hooded figure behind which he had hidden for so long—even from himself—slipped away from him.

Now you will die, said the Dark Side. You cannot protect her without me.

But the Dark Side lied. And Obi-Wan was too skilled a liar to fall for it now.

Killing Vader would not save Leia, he realized. The Sith Lord was irredeemably bound to his master; his death would be felt immediately, would bring the whole wrath of the Imperial Fleet down on them. The Emperor's scrutiny would trigger a massive security response, too, and the tiny depowered gap in their impenetrable tractor beam array would be instantly discovered and corrected at the first diagnostic scan. No—their escape depended on a security force ten thousand strong continuing to underestimate their importance. Killing Vader would ensure their deaths, now.

Obi-Wan frowned, sweating hard, trying to steady himself. He could not kill Vader, but neither could he yield the battlefield. Vader was hunting them all, and could not be left to succeed. With patience and care he weighed his options. There were not many.

With a calm mind, Obi-Wan reached out to Vader, whose mind had entered an eerie calm of its own. Vader's anger had clouded his perceptions for decades; as a master manipulator, Kenobi had counted on it. But now, by sheer will alone, Vader's evil eye was seeking the children. He would find them before long, unless…

Vader, he called in his mind.

The immense black shadow of his pupil's presence descended on him instantly, like a bird of prey out of a cloudless night.

Obi-Wan.

I have come for your blood, he called. His deceptions were so perfected now that he could lie even in thought. Come to me and finish this.

Aboard the Millennium Falcon, mechanical hands long out of practice struggled to replace the access panel of a repurposed infiltration droid. Working hastily in total darkness, Vader had wired the droid to operate as a homing beacon; using the same crude methods and parts of the smugglers themselves, who had rigged a hundred conflicting systems into the ship's mainframe, Vader was putting the hasty finishing touches on the device's obsolete interface plug when the Jedi Master's call reached him.

He paused in his work. His hand went to his lightsaber—but he hesitated. With a clear mind, Vader could sense them all converging on the impounded freighter. He waited for them in the darkness of the ship, where he had thought to take them by surprise and end their rescue in a single flurry of inescapable horror. But the things he had found there as he worked and waited gave him pause.

Why do you hide from me, Vader? If you are so powerful, why hide from your destiny?

He knew even with his respirator momentarily silenced, even concentrating fully, he could not hide from Kenobi's senses. The powers of perception that came to his mechanical flesh with great difficulty came naturally as breathing to the old man; his ambush, if he stayed, was forefeit anyway.

This confrontation will be your last, Kenobi.

Perhaps it will, old friend.

Reluctantly, sensing some deception he could not place, Vader finished his work. The Falcon's absurdly oversized rectifying antenna dish, as he had spotted from above, was actually a modified control dish salvaged from a Separatist-era battledroid command ship. It had been clumsily wired as both a receiver and a transmitter, enabling the ship's highly illegal battery of guided concussion missiles and providing a powerful long-range interceptor of Imperial communication chatters. That long-range capability, he knew, could be exploited: over hyperwave, the infiltrator droid's rudimentary homing beacon could stretch through hyperspace itself, covering tens of thousands of light years. If the Rebels somehow eluded him—and if Vader left the ship to deal with Kenobi, he had to accept they might—the homing beacon would make the difference between success and failure. And he would not fail the Emperor again.

To conceal his impending ambush, Vader had left a token force of five stormtroopers stationed around the base of the ship. They snapped to attention as he slipped like a shadow down the loading ramp.

"Send for your units," Vader breathed to one of the troopers. "I want three squads protecting this ship at any cost."

"Sir."

Come to me, Padawan. I am ready to teach you one final lesson.

Vader bristled at Obi-Wan's condescension. He tried again to sense the location of Kenobi's students, and found them a respectable distance from the ship; but as Obi-Wan's taunts drew him out, his concentration on their Force signatures waned. They would be easier to hunt down in the bowels of the station after Kenobi was dead, after his smugness and insolence were silenced forever.

You are a fool to challenge the power of the Dark Side.

He was coming.

After two decades of suffering, the desire for revenge could not be wholly pushed from his mind. The Dark Side tugged at him, promised him all the power he could ask for, tempted him with vengeance and justice and an end to his pain.

It would have been a fitting end to both of them, pitting his vengeance against Vader's hatred. One last time, he might have called up the strength and speed of his glorious youth and finished their duel as it began. But that glorious youth had been a lie; it was the last militant gasp of a fallen Jedi Order, and its tainted ways would not come again into the galaxy if Obi-Wan could help it.

He felt the agony roaring back to his bones as the strength of darkness slipped away from him. The lightsaber in his hand was as heavy as a stone. He gripped it with both hands, cleared his mind, and marched into the hangar hallway just as Vader did.

Obi-Wan, she breathed. It was the last name on her lips as she died. It was the name he'd tried to forget, the name no one had called him since—except Leia. It was a name he'd not heard in a long time.

"I've been waiting for you, Obi-Wan," said Darth Vader. There was no more time for reminiscence.