Short chapter warning. I'm just trying to keep up the momentum with this bridge chapter.
Obi-Wan floats in a sea of darkness. It is calm here, soft and peaceful. The warm glow from before moves away, but before he can quite accustom himself to its absence, a piercing wail shatters the quiet of his subconscious.
It is as if he is suddenly standing in the midst of a hurricane, buffeted by gale-force winds of emotion, raw and uninhibited by age or maturity. Somehow, the winds feel familiar...like a toddler's tantrums that had once drawn dirt devils forth from the dune hills of Tatooine…
Luke?!
"What's wrong…?" He rasps in a voice too weak to carry beyond a hum in his throat. The boy does not answer. He forces open his eyes and sees Luke's silhouette in his peripheral visions, his anguished young face turned heavenward toward the stars.
Wait. Stars? Why are there stars? There are no stars like this on Alderaan!
His feverish mind works furiously to make sense of it all…He remembers pain, darkness, fear, and...
Anakin!
It all falls into place as Obi-Wan suddenly recognizes the smell of desert cactus. There's a distant roar of engines. And with a strangled cry of his own, Obi-Wan understands why the boy sobs.
Anakin has left them. Anakin has abandoned them. Anakin has run off to die.
The fury of Luke's emotions batter and bruise him as he pulls back the throttle, urging the fighter higher and higher into the heavens and further and further from his son. The son who believed in him. The son who wanted nothing more than for his father to come home.
I HATE YOU! The boy shrieks telepathically.
Anakin squeezes his eyes shut in a vain effort to block out Luke's screams.
"I hate me, too." He whispers to the nothingness that surrounds him. Was this how Obi-Wan had felt on the banks of Mustafar?
His heart twists with pain and pride; it is the first time the boy has communicated through their bond, stumbling quite by accident onto a talent normally reserved for Jedi Masters.
Anakin feels Obi-Wan's consciousness stir as the fighter breaches Tattooine's lower atmosphere, but before the old Jedi can regain awareness, he cuts himself off from their bond, wincing at the sudden emptiness inside his heart. Whatever Obi-Wan might have to say, he does not wish to hear it.
I hate you…! The child screams, again, as the fighter bursts through the clouds and into open space.
Luke is almost assuredly unaware that his father hears him, sees him, feels his pain…
The boy is an inferno of anger and hurt. So much like his father... But, perhaps, this time, Obi-Wan will be able to do for Luke what he never could for Anakin.
Oh, Force.
Anakin doesn't want to die. For the first time in a long time, he doesn't want to die. He wants to go home to Tattoine. To Luke and Obi-Wan. To Owen and Beru. To scoop the boy into his arms and embrace the old Jedi, and live out their days on that damned moisture farm in the damned sand-filled desert.
Even so, he remembers forks of Sith lightning. And bodies, twisted and warped, imprisoned forever in tombs of formaldehyde, the Sith's perverted trophies of a bloodsport that had seen Jedi hunted in all the known galaxy.
Vader pictures Luke and Leia, writhing and screaming as dark laughter burbles from a twisted figure, and his jaw sets in grim fury as he punches coordinates into the navigation system.
Sidious will never stop hunting him. So long as Anakin lives, Sidious will pursue him.
On reflex, he touches a hand to his chest, feeling the weight of the charge thrumming with the beat of his heart. He does not wish to die. But if it comes down to it, at least, even in death, he will stand a chance.
Vader has given Organa all the intelligence that he can, and already, plans are being laid to systematically cripple the Red Guard and other defensive measures built around the Emperor's throne. Powerful though he is, not even Sidious can be in all places at once.
Even outed as a traitor, the Rebellion can still make use of at least some of his knowledge. The Imperial bureaucracy is highly centralized and horribly inefficient. It will be years before they can institute new protocols and plans to replace those he has already provided to the Rebels.
Luke and Leia will not suffer their father's fate.
He will avenge Padmé. He will avenge Obi-Wan.
And failing that...
Well, then, at least he will die trying.
Luke is sobbing, and if Obi-Wan had the breath in his body, he would sob along with him. The Emperor can be beaten, the Jedi believes it with every fiber of his being, but not even Anakin can beat him alone; Obi-Wan knows it, and Anakin knows it, too. To challenge Sidious alone is tantamount to suicide!
Even so, he does not yet have time to ponder Anakin's dark fate. Not yet. Not when Anakin's son is falling apart beside him.
The Force is all chaos and cacophony, the sands beginning to swirl around them as the storm of Luke Skywalker gathers in fury. The child is crackling dangerously with power he scarcely understands, a maelstrom of emotions provoked by his father's apparent abandonment.
Luke is like a glowing beacon in the Force, and if he cannot be calmed, he will surely draw attention to them from all the wrong places, the worst of them being Darth Sidious himself.
With great effort, Obi-Wan's fingers fumble and undo the strap holding him down as he forces himself to roll onto his elbow, sitting half-up on the pallet.
The very act makes spots dance before his vision, but he has no time to worry about that now.
Luke startles at the sudden movement, dropping the pallet's remote into the swirling sands as gales of wind whip madly around him, the eye at the center of the storm. His eyes light upon the Jedi in alarm, but after only a split second, recognition dawns across his face, and he practically throws himself into Obi-Wan's frame.
"He left me…He left! He promised… and he left!" The boy blubbers, hyper-ventilating as he buries his face into the Jedi's throbbing shoulder.
"I hate him!" The child screams, hiccuping helplessly as the desert roars with the winds of his own making.
Despite the tears misting his own eyes, Obi-Wan shushes him, clinging as tightly to the child as he is able. His heart throbs as he watches over the child's shoulder as the receding shadow of a ship disappears into the skies above.
Do not do this! He cries wordlessly, his eyes entreating the vanishing shadow. I beg of you…! Anakin! There is no response. It seems Anakin has closed himself off in the Force. His entreaties have fallen on deaf ears.
Despair threatens to undo him, but Obi-Wan cannot yet afford such luxuries, not when Luke is conjuring a sandstorm all around them, glowing like a supernova in the living Force.
"Breathe, Luke. Breathe." Somehow, he manages to speak the words steadily around the lump in his throat, allowing the child to lean into his stricken body. "Do you feel your heartbeat?" He asks as the winds seem to soften, if only marginally.
"…you're just trying to distract me…!" Luke shrieks, the wind picking up in force.
"Yes, Luke," Obi-Wan admits over the howling wind, "Yes, I am." He coughs painfully. "Can you hear my heartbeat, Luke?" After a moment, he feels Luke nod into his ribcage, and the storm softens ever-so-slightly.
"Do you smell the desert?" Another nod. The winds are even quieter now.
"What—" he coughs again. "What…does it…smell like?"
"Dirt." A small voice whimpers.
"And what," another cough, "…what else?"
The winds have softened to a breeze, Luke's emotions are drawing in now, mooring themselves.
"Sweat."
A sardonic laugh bubbles up in the Jedi's throat. He is drenched in sweat from the fever still burning in his body.
"That would be me, Luke...what else…does the desert smell like…?"
"Like cactus…" He sobs.
At last, the desert falls silent again. Obi-Wan heaves a sigh of relief as the glow of Luke's Force signature fades away. How the child hadn't noticed the storm gathering around him, Obi-Wan would never understand.
"I hate him." The child mumbles.
"I know," Obi-Wan rasps. And I mourn him... He thinks silently.
It seems Anakin's wake of destruction has changed in form but not in magnitude. Anakin has given up hope, given up on the chance that he might escape the Emperor, and in so doing, he has broken Luke's heart.
His arm is quivering from the effort of sitting up, his head still spinning with exertion.
"Luke…I—I need to lay down, now. Is that okay?"
"Yeah…" the boy says softly, still sniffling as Obi-Wan collapses with a groan into the pallet. After a moment, the Jedi shivers involuntarily, his damp tunic doing him no favors in the cool night air. He is heartsick and exhausted.
It seems Anakin has, yet again, found a way to show him a new depth of grief...
Should Yoda be the one to kill Sidious since, canonically, he could've done it and chose not to?