Chapter Text
When Obi-Wan landed the starfighter, he was immediately assaulted by the suffocating heat of Mustafar, the embers burning the air in his lungs. But there was something else lurking beneath it; an oppressive dark energy, a swirling miasma radiating from a bunker beneath the mining facility where a pulse of freezing obsidian malice crept out from beneath a world made of molten lava. He followed the twirling tendrils, dreading what he would find at the end of this path.
As he approached the door he could hear the desperate muffled pleas of Shu Mai, president of the commerce guild,“We were promised a reward, a handsome reward.”
“I am your reward,” a snakeline version of Anakin’s voice slithered forward. “Don’t you find me handsome?”
Even the metal bunker door could not disguise the crackle of a lightsaber igniting and the scurrying of frantic feet. Obi-Wan could no longer hesitate. Using the Force, he wrenched the blast shield off its track and flung the door open.
He was wholly unprepared for the vision that greeted him.
Anakin was nothing but a darkened silhouette in the glow of his blue lightsaber, blade drawn threateningly as he towered over the Separatist leadership. Poggle the Lesser and Nute Gunray were cowering in a corner while Shu Mai kneeled pleading before his former Padawan.
Anakin’s Force signature throbbed, ailing and swirling with a sinister aura.
“Anakin. That is enough.” Obi-Wan stepped into the room, his stance wide and certain, hand hovering at his side, ready to draw his saber.
“Stay out of this, Obi-Wan. I told you to leave!” The cockiness he exuded a second ago crumbled, giving way to the jagged raw nerves underneath.
Obi-Wan swallowed thickly. “Anakin, stop! They must be brought to justice. You cannot execute them.”
“He’s gone mad!” Nute Gunray shrieked from the corner.
“Silence!” Anakin’s hand shot out. Instantaneously, the alien was lifted by an invisible force, choking him mid air. His feet frantically kicked under him as he desperately struggled to breathe.
“Anakin. Enough.” Obi-Wan’s own hand rose, breaking the invisible grip Anakin held on the alien, who fell to the ground and scurried under the table like a spider roach.
Anakin turned fully towards him. His face was twisted with exhaustion and grime, and a yellow mask of sickness and rage. His hair clung to his neck and forehead, plastered with sweat.
Obi-Wan had heard stories of how the Dark Side could twist a Jedi until they were unrecognizable, the tortured Force manifesting its malady in their once serene features. Obi-Wan always thought they were exaggerations, but what he saw in Anakin broke his heart. The despair emanated from him in a spiral of pain; it was visible on his face, and palpable in the Force.
His heavy steps rang in the metal floor. As Anakin advanced, Obi-Wan took measured steps backwards, intentionally drawing him out and away from the cowering Separatists. He hit the controls lowering the secondary blast shield behind them, if nothing but to buy the cowardly trade federation leadership more time to escape.
And spare Anakin’s blade the blood.
“Anakin… I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan rasped. “I failed you. I shouldn't have left you.”
“You shouldn't have come. I need to finish this and to do that, you need to leave.” Those last words echoed like shockwaves in the Force and with little warning, Anakin ignited his saber and lunged towards Obi-Wan.
“If only I could,” Obi-Wan whispered, standing firm against Anakin’s rage. The shockwave of the Force crashed into and through him, but yet he stood firmly in place.
“I am not afraid to make you leave,” Anakin hissed through his teeth. The thick threat lingered in his voice, charging the air particles with his anger.
Obi-Wan drew his lightsaber. He listened to its familiar hum, letting it ground him as he searched for his Padawan somewhere in the unblinking sickly eyes that stared at him. He closed his eyes and took a split second to open himself to the Force for guidance before raising his saber in front of his body and igniting the blade..
Furiously, Anakin charged at him, hand outstretched. When Obi-Wan felt his throat constrict under crushing pressure, he instinctively flexed his hand, managing to break free with only a second to spare before Anakin hurled a barrage of attacks towards him.
The whirlwind flurry of blue trails whizzed and crashed against one another. Obi-Wan let the Force guide him to parry and deflect, the movements saturated with the certainty of a man who had taught his attacker every move he knew. The Jedi Master backed away, measuring the distance to the platform above him, baiting Anakin to move away from the bunker.
The Force flowed through Obi-Wan; he was now simultaneously Obi-Wan with the knowledge of Anakin and his skill, and Obi-Wan with the knowledge of every platform, piece of machinery, and control panels in the facility. But he was also the energy and flow of the lava below, the ash floating in the thick, suffocating air. In this omniscient state of consciousness, the Force coordinated a path to back Anakin into a corner, into a space where he could do no harm to himself or others. With heavy steps, Anakin followed, his lightsaber menacingly swinging in precise circles behind him.
When Obi-Wan reached the edge of the catwalk, he shrugged off his cloak and let it flutter over the edge of the walkway and into the lava below. He drew in a deep breath and opened himself to the Force. He felt the cold, electrifying energy radiating from Anakin and in response, pushed his own soul-crushing heartache, bone-deep regret, and immense guilt into the Force, letting it carry the burden and clearing the way for the light to stream in.
In two strides, Anakin was upon him.
The lava below surged as their blades locked once again, its gushing swell a parallel to the rage rising in the younger man. Obi-Wan braced himself against Anakin’s heavy two handed overhead strikes. The furious frenzy of his blows exuded a crashing energy and with every powerful swing, Obi-Wan wondered just how long he could sustain his defense before the exhaustion wore Anakin down.
Each strike was parried precisely, hundreds of hours of lightsaber practice making each move predictable. They knew each other so well that each of their strikes flowed together like a lethal, well-practiced dance. The cerulean light of their lightsabers was nothing more than a blurred halo around their bodies, bright against the scarlet rivers of fire below their boots. They circled, lightsabers spinning, looking for an inch of give. A single opportunity to surge forward with a victory strike, but their life at war had forged their fighting styles together… had forged them together. The same intimate knowledge of each other that made them an inseparable and effective team was now a weakness neither of them could exploit.
Anakin attacked faster than the mortal mind could process, but Obi-Wan no longer had to think; he relinquished all conscious thought to the will of the Force, letting it guide him.
***
Struggling to find an attack that Obi-Wan couldn’t defend or deflect, only one thought surfaced in Anakin’s mind: get Obi-Wan out of the way, conscious or not. He had to send him far away, somewhere where he could never discover the atrocities Anakin had committed, nor the monster he had become. The guilt and shame crept up his bones, slowly wrapping and coiling around him, its tentacles wrapping around his windpipe..
There was no way Obi-Wan would ever forgive him. Not if he ever found out; perhaps, it would be more merciful if his old Master did him the favor of putting him out of his misery before the Chancellor did.
That thought alone made Anakin hate himself even more.
“You shouldn't be here. I told you to leave. There is nothing you can do. Everything is lost. I am lost.” Again, Anakin heard his voice as though he were hovering outside of his body like a spectre. He didn’t recognize its timbre; it had grit and smoke and it spat and sputtered like the lava surging around them.
The man before him—his mentor and best friend, who he once trusted with his life—shook his head, disappointed. “No, Anakin. You know I can’t do that.”
“Obi-Wan, I’m giving you a chance to leave. To escape!” Anakin’s voice cracked “You won't have to fight anymore. You can live out the rest of your life in the peace I brought… the peace I sacrificed myself for.. The peace I forged with my bare hands”
Anakin waited for the lecture, for the judgement. For the strike, the steadfast attempt to bring an end to his existence and make him pay for the crimes he had committed. But none of it ever came.
“Anakin, I’ll never know peace without you.” Obi-Wan’s voice rang crystal clear in Anakin’s head. Despite the sound of flowing lava and machinery clanking, these words cut through his haze, and caused the furious dragon in his heart to hissing and coiling in disgust and confusion.
I’ve done terrible, disgustings things. How could he say something like that?
Instead of striking him down, Obi-Wan was calling him his source of peace? His Master… always the perfect Jedi. There was no way Obi-Wan would forgive him once he found out what Anakin’d done. No one ever would. Anakin felt like furiously clawing at Obi-Wan, confessing his sins in disgusting detail just to prompt him to recoil and react. Death would be an easier punishment than a lifetime of disappointing the man that raised him to be above such heinous acts. At least in death, Anakin could finally rest without having to live with the guilt.
Anakin’s darkness swirled, radiating fury, but Obi-Wan’s pleading face did not echo that sentiment. It showed no anger, simply remorse. The next words caught the newly minted Sith Lord by surprise, “Anakin, I’m sorry.”
***
The Force showed Obi-Wan a tremor of hesitation in the middle of Anakin’s swing. It was precisely the opening he needed. Ducked the glowing blade aimed at his neck, Obi-Wan rolled the edge of his hand against Anakin’s elbow, deflecting the strike and stepping into his personal space.
He reached into currents of the Force, searching for a weak spot. Instantly, Obi-Wan found it; a tremble in the servos of Anakin’s durasteel arm, a tension in the wire harness that controlled his mechanical thumb. Concentrating ,he applied a surgical flick of the Force to the wire harness, tugging the cable loose.
The shock and surprise on Anakin’s face ripped through every corner of the Force when the wire dislodged. Like a puppet who’d lost its string, Anakin’s thumb went slack. The Lightsaber he held with convection, the lightsaber that was the weapon of his fury and tool of destruction fell from his grasp into Obi-Wan's expecting hand.
Obi-Wan pressed on, pushing his elbow across his chest until the younger man was forced to hug himself, trapping his own limbs. Then Obi-Wan wrapped his arms around his one-time apprentice with inhuman strength, cradling him to his chest and holding him tight as though he were a child once again.
“You have no idea what you’ve done. You underestimate my power,” Anakin snarled, the metal of the catwalk shaking as his fury raged in the Force.
The Force granted Obi-Wan the strength of durasteel as his grip held around the young man’s shoulders. He had no time to question how his arms could hold the thrashing Zillo beast that was once his apprentice but somehow, he managed to restrain him, to contain his fury until he no longer posed a threat.
Their faces were inches apart. The heat from the lava made their sweet and ash-soaked skin glow red, dark shadows cutting across their determined features. Obi-Wan held on tight, inches away from the glowing red and yellow mask of Anakin’s growling face, waiting for the maelstrom to break. Anakin thrashed against him with the fury of a Krayt dragon, but the Force was granting him the strength to hold on and the clarity of purpose.
As he snarled at him, Obi-Wan was flooded with memories of that same voice several years younger, whimpering as Obi-Wan gently applied ointments to the burns his apprentice earned from sparring, rocking him back to sleep after night terrors shook the very ground on which he stood. These memories were followed by the boy’s glowing smile, gifted after patting his back in approval of a job well done, his relieved face at seeing Obi-Wan sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in the back of a LAT-AT, comforting him after a battle with heavy losses.
The Force was showing him the truth, a truth that he ignored because of an undue obedience of the rules of the Council; every time Anakin spiraled, it was Obi-Wan that aided him. Every time he feared his affection was a "forbidden attachment", he eased Anakin back from the edge of the dark. Each and every time, it was his intervention that brought him back, that brought him home. The comfort Anakin had spent a lifetime chasing was right here, in the arms that now refused to let him fall.
The Force had led Obi-Wan to Anakin to keep him safe and sound. It was in that moment he realized how foolish he had been. He had allowed Anakin to seek comfort elsewhere, but the Force showed him only he could give his aching heart the love that would fill the empty, gaping void.
Because Anakin loved with the fury of a black hole, hungry for all the light that he could grasp, a gravitational pull so intense, his very aura threatened to swallow the galaxy whole. Obi-Wan realized that only his own light, that glowed intensely and steady when they were together, would satiate his need for steadfast love.
This was Kenobi and Skywalker as they were meant to be: interlaced in the very threads of the galaxy, light and dark in balance.
The dark side boiled and swirled through Anakin as he spit out, “I hate you!”
Obi-Wan did not flinch, His voice was calm and clear, “But I love you, my dear.”
The words hung in the sulfurous air, clean and crisp. Their utterance, glowing bright in the space between them, made the Force positively beam. The moment suspended the passage of time, stretching the instance where the Force glowed and hummed brightly.
The dark side recoiled in the presence of that light. It hissed and scratched, its heavy tentacles thrashing. But slowly, it sulked away like an injured animal, plume by plume, until its shadow was indistinguishable from the swirling ash and smoke of the mining facility.
***
Visibly trembling, Anakin stilled, looking into his Master’s face.
Could he believe it?
Could a man who had done such terrible things still be loved?
After… everything he had done?
He told himself Obi-Wan only uttered those words because he didn't know the depth of his betrayal. If he ever found out, he would surely throw him into the lava below. Anakin would never be forgiven; he could never forgive himself.
His sickly yellow eyes searched Obi-Wan’s deep blue, looking for fury, anger, disgust, or even the familiar sting of disappointment. Anything. But he found none of it. Instead, he saw a love so vast it swallowed his hate whole. He saw a love that was grateful to see him alive and breathing, a love that he took for granted all these years. Anakin had betrayed that love with his ambition, his ego, his lies. And yet it never wavered, it never left. Even as he flailed and his sun dragon heart recoiled, hissing and breathing fire into the face of his deliverance, Obi-Wan didn’t flinch in his devotion.
Anakin stopped breathing. The yellow fire in his eyes flickered and subsided.
Obi-Wan’s expression softened, the tension in his eyebrows unfurling. He closed the distance between them, hand coming up to cradle the back of Anakin’s neck, pulling him closer until his lips pressed a soft benedictory kiss on Anakin’s forehead. A single hot tear rolled down Anakin’s cheeks, carving a soot laden trail.
Obi-Wan pulled Anakin’s head towards his shoulder and finally, the Chosen one collapsed, letting the full weight of his broken body settle against his Master’s. Anakin was tired. , so much so that his bones ached and his chest felt sore. The last three days had aged him more than the last three years spent at war. He felt ancient and weary, his soul shattered, but in this moment, his Master carried the weight of his tortured thoughts and his exhausted body. The older man offered him a brief sanctuary from the turmoil he felt, single handedly shouldering the weight of the galaxy.