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On a lonesome desert planet, far on the outer reaches of the galaxy, night falls. The smaller of the two suns is setting, and just on the very far horizon, the first glints of stars start to peek out.
The dusk is a bloody gold, drowning the desert in its glare. It casts long shadows across the dunes, turning even the most innocent of hills into something dark and strange.
Deep in the desert wastes, a man watches the sunset. He is wrapped in a thick brown robe, the hood flipped up to shield against the suns’ harsh light.
But as night falls, so does the need for the hood, and it is because of this that he does not put it back up again when the wind rips it away from his head.
Look at him. He is a handsome man. Of that, there is no doubt.
But there is something about the lips, the deep-set heaviness of the eyes, the carved and sunken cheeks, that suggests soul-rending grief.
This is a man in mourning. The slump of his shoulders is defeat incarnate, the listless drape of his folded hands speaks of loss too much for even ten-thousand souls to bear.
Anakin Skywalker is dead.
The thought, even now, nearly brings him to his knees.
If he were of the poetical type, he would have said that Anakin had been nothing more and nothing less than the other half of his soul.
Obi-Wan, though a negotiator and skilled with words, is the kind of man that cares with action and deed. But, if pressed, Obi-Wan Kenobi would say this:
He was my brother. I loved him. Had he asked, I would have left the Jedi Order for him.
It is the greatest honour Obi-Wan can bestow. It is the only honour Obi-Wan can give Anakin, now surely long dead and lost.
Lost to the hatred and wickedness of Darth Vader. He had screamed as he died. Obi-Wan had let him.
Obi-Wan had been too late. When he’d arrived on Mustafar, Anakin, dear Anakin, was already dead.
He would have never suffered Padmé’s pain otherwise. Darth Vader had tried to kill her. Her pain and loss and heartbreak had finished the job, the agony of a snapped bond draining away her will to live.
Sometimes, very very faintly and vaguely, Obi-Wan would look into the binary sunset and wonder what else is left for him here, amongst the forgotten dunes of Tatooine.
The best, brightest, part of his life has already faded. Murdered. The only thing Obi-Wan can see before him was a long march into the future, dropping away into a kind of stretched out, enduring despair.
He has already avenged Anakin. Obi-Wan has killed Darth Vader. Surely.
Obi-Wan had fought him, on Mustafar. He had fought him through the winding corridors of the mining complex, across the lava and spew, until they had come to the fiery banks and crumbling earth of the largest lava flow on Mustafar.
There, Obi-Wan had defeated Darth Vader. Then Obi-Wan had left him to succumb to his injuries and to Mustafar. Obi-Wan had cut his brother down, rent him limb from limb. Let him burn. Let him scream—
It was not the Jedi way. There was no mercy in it.
But Obi-Wan Kenobi does not feel much like a Jedi. He had not much pity left for Darth Vader, the thing that killed Anakin Skywalker.
And took his skin.