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The dream starts like this.
He is on a desert planet. He is on a mission with his Jedi master, Qui-Gon Jinn. Things have progressed as they usually do on a Jinn-Kenobi mission—that is to say, nothing has gone according to plan. Which is how they end up stranded on Tatooine with a royal retinue, a leaking hyperdrive, a powerful federation on their heels, and no solutions in sight.
“Keep your mind in the here and now, Obi-Wan,” Master Qui-Gon chastises, pulling on his apprentice’s padawan braid with a tug that is as fond as it is scolding. “The Force will provide.”
How many times has Obi-Wan heard his master say that? For as long as he can remember, his apprenticeship has been a combination of, “Keep your mind on the here and now where it belongs, Padawan,” and “The Force will provide,” and “It is not ‘another pathetic lifeform’ Obi-Wan, it is your responsibility for the next few days.”
In the dream, Master Qui-Gon goes into the city with the Gungan, the Queen’s handmaiden, and the astromech droid all trailing behind him. His master returns with a working hyperdrive, his original companions in tow, and a little boy with sandy hair falling into eyes as bright as the blue of Obi-Wan’s lightsaber.
His master reclines on the floor, propped up by his forearms. He is drenched in sweat, a product of being out in the heat of the binary suns at their zenith, the tough sprint to the ship, and the fierce lightsaber fight with the black-clad assailant.
Yet, despite his chest heaving for breath, Master Qui-Gon manages to gasp out, “Obi-Wan Kenobi, meet Anakin Skywalker.”
The boy glows, both in his expression and in the Force. “Are you a Jedi too?” he asks, tone excited and bordering on reverential. “Pleased to meet you!”
Obi-Wan takes the boy’s outstretched hand, a wry smile pulling at the corner of his lips. He finds himself hoping that he doesn’t have to end up taking care of this Anakin Skywalker, but is careful to shield that thought from his master. No need to tempt the Jedi master into giving Obi-Wan another lesson in empathy and responsibility for pathetic life forms—even if this one happens to be a human child.
By the time Obi-Wan wakes up, he can’t remember the child’s name.
Reality goes like this.
He is on the desert planet of Tatooine. It is the most miserably hot, desolate planet that Obi-Wan has ever had the misfortune to visit. He fancies that even before the ship makes planetfall and lowers the gangplank, he can feel the gritty sand sinking into every crevice of the ship and his clothes.
Yes, it was his idea to land on Tatooine. Yes, it was the only viable option at the time with a leaking hyperdrive, a royal retinue at risk, and a powerful federation nipping at their heels. And yes, Obi-Wan has a bad feeling about this.
Master Qui-Gon tells his apprentice to mind the here-and-now as well as the ship and its royal occupants. He reminds his apprentice that the Force will provide and he sets out across the sands to the nearest settlement, trailing a Gungan, royal handmaiden, and astromech droid behind him. He returns with a working hyperdrive and his original companions in tow. There is no little boy with the Force-blue eyes and a name that reaches for the sky. There is no blackclad assassin dogging his master’s steps.
Not, at least, until Naboo.
It happens in the space between two heartbeats. Thump— he is a Jedi, a peacekeeper, an acolyte of the light. Tha-thump— he is not.
Masterless. Rudderless. Fatherless. The darkness creeps in at the corners of his mind. There is no place left for him in the Jedi Order. There is nothing left but for the Sith Slayer to go.
Go where? Nowhere. Somewhere. Somewhere he can forget, where he can leave behind the what-if and the I’m-sorry and the rage-pain-anguish that burns in his chest, where every breath doesn’t smell of burnt flesh and death. Somewhere the memories can’t find him, where the death throes of the expectations and hopes of a lifetime can rage and storm out of the judging eyes of the light.
He is not a coward. Cowards don’t last long against a Sith Lord; their fear would turn against the coward, empowering the Sith only that much more. Obi-Wan knows this, knows this in the intimate way that he knows the touch of another mind against his, for that is what the dark feels like.
He stands, trapped behind a ray shield. Watches as a saber goes through his master’s chest. Screams. Denies. Shakes. Rages. Reaches out to the universe, desperate for any kind of edge or help—
And the Darkness reaches back.
Use us, the Dark coaxes, soft and alluring as a lover. More sentient than the Light ever has been. Trust us.
Like any good Jedi, Obi-Wan fights, pushes back on the darkness even as inside him something starts to crumble.
Liar, he howls back at the dark. Howls even as something in his heart thrums in response, revenge-kill-maim and hurt-slay-kill .
“Great is the price the dark side demands,” Master Yoda had once counseled, his caf-colored eyes meeting the gaze of each Senior Padawan gathered in the meditation circle. “If touched once, forever dominate your destiny it will. Once heard, ignored, the call cannot be. Lose yourself, you will. Remember this, you must.”
The chill of those words had seeped into Obi-Wan’s bones that day. Around him, the other Senior Padawans said, “Yes Master,” voices dutifull and zealous. Obi-Wan had only been capable of mouthing the words, his breath caught in his chest.
Because a traitorous part of him noted that despite everything, Master Yoda had never elaborated exactly on what the price was that the dark side demanded.
Does it matter? Obi-Wan asks himself, staring at the fallen body of his master. The master-padawan bond unravels in his mind; he feels strands snap with each of his master’s labored breaths.
Look at what you’ve already lost, the Dark prods, though it sounds a lot like his own voice. The price is already paid. It was your Master’s life. Isn’t he worth avenging?
The Zabrak paces beyond the ray shield, body tight with anticipation and impatience. Kill-destroy-triumph bleeds into the Force from the dark figure.
A Jedi does not seek vengeance , Obi-Wan thinks, gripping his lightsaber tighter. The ray shield throws a red haze over the scene in front of him—or is that the rage-fury-hate thudding in his ears?
Not vengeance, justice, the voice soothes, stoking the anger-righteousness-pain in his gut and in his heart. Justice for a fallen Jedi. Justice for your Master.
Justice for your father.
The ray shield cycles down. The Zabrak grins. Obi-Wan’s saber ignites. Sabers clash. Darkness envelopes. Destiny writhes.
In the end, it is the Zabrak’s bisected body that falls into the shaft. But it is Obi-Wan Kenobi who Falls.
Obi-Wan is brought back to wakefulness by a sharp kick to his ribs, followed by a snarled, “Wake up, scum!”
He does so groggily, his eyes struggling to focus on his surroundings. That and the dryness in his throat and mouth tell him that he has been unconscious for some time. He blinks once, twice, trying to clear his vision. Around him, the hazy outline of a ship’s cargo hold comes into view.
Another kick connects with his gut, hard enough that he gags in response. If he’d had anything in his stomach, he would have lost it all over his attacker’s shoe.
“Easy on the merchandise,” the Trandonshan hisses in Huttese. “Her Excellency won’t like it if you break her toy before she even gets to play.”
At least, Obi-Wan thinks that’s what the reptilian humanoid has said. Obi-Wan has been kicking around the Outer Rim for two years, long enough that he’s fluent in Huttese. But the Trandoshan’s lizard-like tongue adds an extra hiss at the end of every syllable. Combined with a pounding headache, it’s all Obi-Wan can do to hold onto consciousness let alone translate. But it doesn’t matter, anyway. Obi-Wan doesn’t need to translate to know he is in deep poodoo this time.
He blinks harder, the cargo hold coming into sharp focus around him. He reaches out with his senses, the act as natural as stretching—and chokes.
Empty.
Silent.
Gone.
All gone.
He panics. That space just beyond his fingertips, at the edges of his senses, that place where the hum of the universe used to murmur to him, through him, within him—it’s gone. All gone.
Alone , his soul keens. Alone, alone, alone!
His mind scrambles, straining for that hum, that soft song that even in his darkest moments brushed against his mind. The song that in the last two years had become darker, heavier, more seductive than the comforting hum it had once been.
Once, he’d thought he’d do anything to keep those dark murmurs from becoming his reality. But this silence, this emptiness? The silence rings in his ears. It hurts. He reaches out into nothing—there is nothing, and he is nothing—
“What’s wrong with him?” demands the individual who kicked him, speaking Basic. The familiar cant of his words finds its way through the storm in Obi-Wan’s mind. “He’s having a fit or something. Chsssk, I didn’t do it!”
The Trandoshan responds in Huttese again. Obi-Wan can’t follow exactly what he says, but he can understand Basic. “The slave implant did this?!”
The Trandoshan responds again. Obi-Wan only recognizes a handful of words: “sleemo,” “Force inhibitor” and “Jedi.” None are reassuring.
“Kriff,” the Basic speaker says, panicking. “They didn’t say shit about selling a Jedi—”
His captor’s words are a distant hum against his senses, but not the kind of hum his soul is crying for. Who cares what these slavers have to say? Something is wrong, is very wrong. This has to be a nightmare, it has to be. Because that space beyond him, within him, without him is silent and empty and he’s alive but he wishes he were dead because he can’t feel the Force.
“—you want the whole fripping Republic to come down on our asses?! We can’t sell a Jedi, the entire order would be—”
“A fallen Jedi.” The Trandoshan has switched to Basic, but Obi-Wan can’t focus on that. Fallen . The word touches something inside him, rips him back to the here-and-now.
“The kriffing-frip is that?” the Trandoshan’s companion demands.
Fallen, Obi-Wan thinks, dazed. He is Fallen.
Absently, a part of Obi-Wan’s mind—the part not currently panicking at the void that exists where the Force should be—makes note of the second man’s accent. Based on his blatant refusal to speak Huttese (despite proof that he understands it perfectly) Obi-Wan is willing to bet his second captor is a human of some kind. The being’s accent places him from somewhere in the Core; human Core-dwellers, in Obi-Wan’s experience, are some of the only beings whose arrogance extends to an unwillingness to speak a language they fully understand.
“Core-fodder,” the Trandoshan snarls in response in the same tone used earlier for “moron,” his evaluation of his partner echoing Obi-Wan’s own thoughts. It takes Obi-Wan a moment to realize the Trandoshan has reverted to Huttese. “A fallen Jedi is one who has been expelled from the Jedi Order. They have repudiated him.”
The words echo around in the silence beyond-within-without and hurt more for their truth. Obi-Wan shies away from their burn, made all the worse for the casual way the Trandoshan pronounces them.
“I thought beings were born Jedi,” the Core-dweller says, sounding disturbed at the thought. “I didn’t think you could just stop being a Jedi.”
Obi-Wan chokes on a laugh—no, a sob?
“You are a moron,” the Trandonshan hisses, menacing and short-tempered. “All you need to know is that this Jedi is no longer under the protection of the Order or the Republic and that Her Excellency has paid handsomely to have him fitted with a tracker and an inhibitor. This slave is her problem now.”
Slave , Obi-Wan thinks to himself, inside that yawning emptiness that seems to be growing wider with every heartbeat. They mean me.
The last time he was a slave, he’d been a thirteen-year-old Jedi initiate who had aged out of the system. His hopes and dreams of being a Jedi Knight had been in shreds. Now here he is again, repudiated by the Order, Fallen, his dreams of the future with the Jedi once again in shreds.
All at once, it is too much. Darkness descends once more and this time Obi-Wan falls into it gratefully. The snap-hiss of dueling sabers and the chshh-chshh-chshh of rotating ray shields activating waits, as it always does, but this time Obi-Wan almost welcomes it.
If he dies there this time, he never has to wake up.