AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION: Treating as canon the duel on Kalakar Six in Star Wars Tales #9 between Vader and Maul. Set around 9 BBY.
He is lost in the mire of darkness that is his Master, consumed by delicate wires of pain winding through his sinews. He is encased in a walking prison, a shell like that of a dung beetle. It drowns out light and sound. And he burns. He burns all over. Once, once, the world did not burn.
But that time is no longer.
Sidious has cast him out. He knows it before he arrives in the Kalakar system on some pretextual search for a holocron that likely never existed.
His Master has resurrected a renewed Apprentice and has sent him, his loyal Second, to his slaughter. And a small near-dead part of him bristles at having been repaid with such venom. He should not bristle. It is, after all, the way of the Sith.
As the cultists denounce him as a pretender to the title of "Apprentice" the Force rings with painful truth.
And then the hooded figures present the replacement his Master has chosen.
He does not have time to question how the Zabrak lives. What dark magic has brough him forth from beyond the grave. He hardly believes it is real. Instead, the duel begins, and he fights, as he is bid to do. Even as his bones ache to know it is Darth Sidious who has rejected him, has thrown him to live or die in gladiatorial combat.
Ever since Mapuzo, Ben Kenobi feels the agony as surely as the sand beneath his fingers. It tortures him day and night. A fitting punishment for his failures. The river seems only to flow one way, washing torments downstream and into his veins. He swims constantly against the current, a part of his mind now always preoccupied with battling the waves crashing over him.
Whether he wants to or not, he always senses the feelings radiating through the old and twisted bond. He feels Vader's pains as if they have been inflicted upon himself.
For months, the pain wears on him, and after a while, it grows nearly unbearable.
Fevered Force visions assault his dreams, but one night, they became particularly vivid as he dreams of Vader, desperate, beaten, wounded, held fast from behind, arms pinned in the grip of a horrifyingly familiar Zabrak that should have been dead. After all, Obi-Wan had killed him.
Obi-Wan's heart leaps to his throat as he sees Vader's one last desperate attempt at beating the Sith as he drives his own saber through his belly, out his back, and into the heart of Darth Maul.
With his dying breath, Maul's eyes widen with shock…
"What…manner of h-hatred…could be…so powerful...?"
"You should have known," Vader rumbles, "there is nothing more hateful than myself."
He has won, but it is a pyrrhic triumph.
He is going to die here. A failed Sith. A bloody mess with nothing to show for it. His Empire is rapidly devolving into a civil war. And now he will no longer be around to stop it.
Sidious had been right. He was weak. And now, getting weaker. The blood oozing from his back and belly mingles with that splattered by the dead man.
The cultists had said Maul was more worthy as an Apprentice because he felt nothing but hate.
Perhaps they had been right.
After driving off the remaining cultists, Obi-Wan finds him sprawled on the ground of Kalakar Six, blood watering the barren soil. At first, he takes it into his mind to kill the petty tyrant. But then he catches sight of the face hidden behind the cracked and wheezing mask. He finds then that he cannot do it.
If he kills him, the agony flowing through their bond will end, and yet, a new wound will open in its place.
The face he sees behind the splintered helm is one twisted in gruesome suffering. It is not proud or arrogant. It is no longer marked by the idiocy of youth, but rather the cruelty of a man embittered.
For the first time in years, Obi-Wan Kenobi's heart blooms with pity for Anakin Skywalker. It is a bud that he had long thought dead. But as the Jedi sets up camp beside where he has fallen, the dormant bud peaks up above the soil, its petals opening toward the sun.
He wakes up. He had not expected to wake. The agony has somehow lessened. He feels warm (when was the last time he felt warm?). There is something soft and familiar smelling wrapped around his frame. He wonders for a moment if he has died and entered some afterlife he did not know existed.
After a moment, though, he recognizes the crackle of a fire, and the brightness burns his eyes beneath his lids. Oxygen flows through a low-profile rebreather that seems to just cover his nose.
A gentle hand rests upon his forehead, and, on hungry reflex, he arcs into it, the touch igniting something pained inside his chest. He stretches the creaking servos of his neck upwards toward the calloused fingertips, only to feel a cup of warm liquid held to his lips, as the hand moves to lift and support the base of his skull.
After a moment, he opens his mouth and takes greedily of the liquid—tea, he recognizes distantly—as it flows and soothes his raw throat.
"Sleep," a voice commands.
And everything fades to black.
The acquiescent response is startling but sure to be short-lived. As soon as Vader remembers who he is and where he is, Obi-Wan's time will run out.
As Obi-Wan strips him of the abdominal armor to get a better look at the damage Vader has inflicted on himself, he considers seizing the red lightsaber from where it hangs reflexively-returned to his belt. Even so, Obi-Wan hesitates; Vader can kill him just as easily without the weapon as he can with it. And somehow, to once more strip him of his weapon, his 'life' as Obi-Wan once called it, feels wrong.
And so, he leaves it, before returning to other matters.
Vader's self-inflicted wounds are deep and would be mortal were it not for the extensive cybernetics snaking through his body. Guilt gnaws in the old Jedi's heart. He had not had a choice. But it did not make the path he had taken any easier. He had not meant to do this to him. He had not wanted to do this. Obi-Wan had begged to die at the hands of Palpatine, but Yoda's wisdom had gotten the better of his heart and led him to that fateful duel on Mustafar.
The Jedi decides he will worry about their inevitable—and likely fatal—confrontation at a later time, but for now, he relishes the ability to hold fluids to his lips and to help him to drink.
When the Sith stirs within his delirious slumber, Obi-Wan's fingers ghost over his skin. And just like that, the mutterings and whimperings cease.
Even if Vader kills him upon his awakening, at least he has had a few final memories of having given kindness to Anakin Skywalker. At least now, the last of Obi-Wan's touches upon his skin will be touches of gentleness, not the violent brutality with which General Kenobi had rent him of his limbs.
Unlike the icy silence that he expects from the brutal med-droids, he becomes vaguely aware of a warm voice that speaks in soft tones, urging him caringly to rest and to heal. Phantom fingers pet and coax him back to the land of the living, and in a strange way, both sensations strike him paradoxically as a perversion, but he cannot quite remember why.
As an open palm cups his cheek, a deeper un-nameable need drives him to turn into its soft support. After a moment, the palm lifts his head, and once more brings first life-giving liquids, and then bitter ration paste, to his parched mouth. When he has had his fill, the hand lowers his head to a pillow of soft fabric.
A rough thumb strokes his browbone, and for reasons he forgets, the act confuses and pains him. Nonetheless, when it withdraws its touch, he finds himself reaching out for it, searching for it, even as his stubborn fingers are sluggish to respond. It had felt so good—so tender—so kind—
It is with that last thought that he sinks back into the darkness.
Anakin clings to him as much as a delirious man can cling to anything, leaning into his touch as if huddling away from the cold. His lips pant and beg for the sustenance brought to his mouth, and his twitching cybernetic fingers reach for Obi-Wan's as the Jedi forces himself to withdraw his hand.
Unlike the inhuman persona of Darth Vader, this wounded creature is full of honest hunger. Not only for food and water. But for touch. For connection. For humanity. For all the things Obi-Wan had believed forever lost, gone, and tainted by the Dark.
Was it possible some shadow of those mercies remained yet in the heart of the twisted being?
He thinks of a little boy on Tatooine and of a feisty Viceroy's daughter. And he wonders if that need for connection might extend to them as well.
He cannot raise his hopes. Even so, he wonders and treasures the mad idea in his heart.
Anakin is dreaming, as he has often done, of Obi-Wan. Of making it all right. It is a deep and childish belief, a belief that he has never been able to shake, ever since the visions that had assaulted him when he bled his kyber crystal.
Vaguely, he recalls the accusations of the Sith acolytes. He had told them that nothing of Obi-Wan remained in him.
But he had lied.
He dreams he sees Obi-Wan's face, older and kinder. And how his Master—his first and only true Master—kneels beside him.
He imagines that Kenobi's hand rests over his sore and pulsing stomach, his being glowing with Light, and Warmth, and Goodness. He dreams that the pain stops for just a moment, as healing flows into his veins, as his bones glow under the warmth of his Master's power and knowledge of the living Force.
It is a lovely dream, but he feels himself slipping deeper into the dark. It is a pity he sleeps so little. Would that he could, he would live in that dream forever.
As Kenobi makes a rudimentary attempt at Force healing, Vader opens his eyes and looks directly at him.
Ben freezes.
The sacred peace is over, he thinks. Now, they shall fight. One or both shall die. But even as he ponders this in dark anticipation, he does not react.
After a moment, the scarred man's eyes widen with interest, and then, to his shock, they fill with adoration that Ben has not seen since Anakin was a small boy, fawning over his first lightsaber.
They stare mutely at one another for what seems to be forever. Obi-Wan breathes forcefully in rhythm with the rebreather.
Soon enough, without having moved or said a word, Vader's eyes slowly begin to flutter closed—the effort of having opened them evidently a tax on meager strength—and Obi-Wan feels the tautness of his shoulders diminish ever so slightly.
"Forgive me, Master…" he moans faintly.
Obi-Wan's heart stops.
And then Anakin has lost consciousness.
Obi-Wan sits back slowly, numb with shock, as he cherishes a new ray of hope. Perhaps he had been confused. Perhaps, somehow, Vader had mistaken him for the Emperor.
Even so, it doesn't matter. Obi-Wan's soul swells with compassion for his Padawan, starved by the Darkness for the Light he so clearly craves. To want. To need. To welcome the kindness of his old Master. This was not the mindset of a Sith!
Padmé had been right. There was good in him. Even now. There must have been good in him…
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