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Obi-Wan stared down at the mangled plastisteel containing the corpse of the man he had once loved.
The Sith Lord's singular yellow eye glared back.
"Goodbye, Darth," Obi-Wan said, turning on his heel to close a door on this chapter of his life. Then he paused.
Past experience told him that abandoning half-dead Lords of the Sith to steep in their vengeance typically didn't end well. In fact, it usually resulted in an obscene amount of collateral damage and was usually more trouble than it was worth.
Still, it felt wrong to strike down a defenseless man, even one so perverted as Darth.
Well, there was nothing else for it, then.
Obi-Wan returned to the drop ship, Darth's outraged cries echoing off the rock faces behind him.
If he remembered correctly, there was an emergency survival kit under the pilot's seat that should contain everything he needed.
Darth was still hissing outraged invectives when Obi-Wan returned, length of rope in hand. The stream of profanity (and truly Anakin Skywalker must be no more because some of those words certainly weren't in his vocabulary) ceased almost immediately as Darth realized that Obi-Wan was back.
"Returned to finish the job—what are you—PUT ME DOWN AT ONCE!" The haughty taunt abruptly shifted into an outraged protest as Obi-Wan crouched down to hoist the Sith Lord into a fireman's carry. Obi-Wan staggered for a moment under the unexpectedly heavy burden of Darth's weight, before drawing upon the Force to help ease the load.
Darth kicked once or twice in an attempt to free himself from Obi-Wan's grasp, but stilled when the life support panel on his chest sparked in warning.
"You will regret this," Darth hissed, the effect ruined somewhat by his modulator choosing that moment to jump three octaves higher. "My star destroyer lies in wait in orbit above this planet, and—"
"Yes, I'm sure they'll be quite eager to strike me down without a direct order from you, Darth," Obi-Wan said reassuringly. For some reason, his statement didn't seem to have the desired effect. If anything, Darth seemed to grow even more outraged.
Obi-Wan had just finished tying the final knot to secure Darth to one of the passenger seats in the hold of the drop ship when a rush of nauseating premonition swept over him. He reared back, attempting to swallow down the waves of panic.
Obi-Wan stood, surveying his work, hoping that his roiling emotions didn't show on his face. Time was of the essence.
"Well, Darth," he said reluctantly, "I'm afraid that what I am about to do is rather uncivilized, but alas, I find I am left with no other choice." Igniting his lightsaber, he swiftly sliced through both of Darth's legs a centimeter below the knees. A second later, Darth's hands were gone as well. The metal limbs fell to the ground with a loud thunk followed by the acrid scent of burnt electronics.
"You dare—" began Darth, but seemed to find himself at a loss for words.
"Like I said," Obi-Wan reiterated as he gathered up the severed extremities, "regretfully uncivilized." He tossed the limbs through the open hatch. "Unfortunately, I have a matter I must attend to and I cannot run the risk of you running off." With the press of a button the hatch hissed shut. "Do behave yourself while I attempt to pilot the ship. I would hate for us to crash."
Darth's vocoder sizzled in a disbelieving sputter.
Luke was safe, leaving Obi-Wan with one less cause for immediate concern. He turned to Reva.
"Do you have a place you can go? I would offer you a ride myself, but…Reva?"
She wasn't listening, her gaze instead fixed on his drop ship, expression slowly twisting into one of horrified concern.
"Reva?"
"Your ship," she said, eyes wide. "There's something wrong with it. It feels…cold. Evil."
Obi-Wan frowned. He focused his senses on the ship. Now that his mind was no longer occupied by his worry for Luke, he could sense the malignant aura radiating from the ship in the Force.
"Ah. Yes. That." He stroked his beard, wondering how to explain the miasma of Darth's rage. "I confronted Vader before coming here. Some of his Dark Side energy must still be clinging to the ship."
Reva nodded, but she still looked doubtful. Which was fair; it wasn't a very good explanation. Obi-Wan felt slightly bad about lying to her, but there really was nothing else to be done. He certainly couldn't tell her he had Darth Vader trussed up and helpless a few mere meters away.
"Tatooine?! You brought me to Tatooine?!!" Darth raged the second Obi-Wan stepped back onto the ship. "That alone would be enough to warrant your death—"
"Yes, Darth, I am well aware that you wish to see me dead. In fact, your threats are starting to get quite repetitive. Do try for some originality next time, would you?"
Obi-Wan had requested to meet them at a private dock. Bail understood the need for secrecy—they had already agreed to keep his existence secret even from their closest of allies. What had been unexpected was the additional request for a hovercart and a med droid to be waiting on standby.
Obi-Wan looked happier than Bail had ever seen him when he emerged from the shuttle. In fact, he almost looked smug, like a cat who had got the cream.
When Obi-Wan rose from his crouch, ushering Leia back to stand with her parents, Bail expected farewells to follow in short succession. Instead, Obi-Wan took him aside.
"There's something else I need to show you," Obi-Wan said, "and it would be best if Leia was not present for it."
Bail felt his eyebrows rise to his hairline. After the ordeal they had just endured together, he couldn't imagine too many things that Obi-Wan would want to keep hidden from Leia, and none of them instilled him with any deep confidence. Despite this, he bent down and extracted a pinky promise from Leia that she would return to where they had left the guards and absolutely would not spy.
As soon as Leia was out of sight, Obi-Wan retreated back into the shuttle. He emerged moments later, a mass of black fabric and leather in his arms.
"Is that—" Breha gasped, a hand rising to her mouth.
"YOU!" crackled the black lump.
"Yes, Darth, I do believe you've already met the Organas," Obi-Wan said brightly.
"My…name…is not…DARTH!"
"That's…Darth Vader," Bail said, hardly able to believe it even as he gave voice to it. "You brought…Darth Vader…to Alderaan."
"Well," Obi-Wan said, "he objected to Tatooine."
"'Objected…to Tatooine'," Breha repeated, sounding faint.
"You took him…to Tatooine?!" Bail demanded.
"Well, I certainly wasn't just going to leave him where he was," Obi-Wan said as though stating the obvious.
"And…is the…situation…on Tatooine…er, under control?"
"I've left it in very capable hands," Obi-Wan reassured them.
(Reva had looked doubtful when Obi-Wan requested that she watch over Luke while he was off-planet, but she had ultimately accepted the responsibility without too much argument. Guarding a youngling would do her good, Obi-Wan thought.)
"Situation on Tatooine? What situation could you possibly have been attending to on Tatooine, Obi-Wan—" Vader boomed.
"Nothing that concerns you, Darth," Obi-Wan lied cheerfully.
"Obi-Wan," Bail said, butting in quickly before an indignant Vader could respond, "what were you hoping to accomplish by—by this?" He gestured helplessly at the Sith Lord in Obi-Wan's arms.
"In the short term? I suppose I was hoping to prevent potential loss of life, much like choosing to keep a tooka cat indoors to protect the local fauna."
("A tooka cat?!" sputtered Vader.)
"In the long term, however," Obi-Wan continued, "I suspect that Darth may prove to be a valuable asset."
Bail could feel a headache coming on. Breha placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"Well," his wife said, "I certainly hope you weren't hoping to keep him here. I'm afraid Alderaan doesn't have the capacity to imprison a Sith Lord indefinitely. And I would prefer not to have him on the same planet as my daughter."
"No, of course not," Obi-Wan said. "I was merely hoping that you would be willing to furnish me with some medical supplies and the resources to repair Darth's life support system, and then we'll be on our way back to Tatooine."
("Back to Tatooine?! I REFUSE—")
"Ah, you brought the hovercart I requested!" Obi-Wan exclaimed, noticing it for the first time. "Excellent," he said, setting Vader inelegantly down upon it. "I must say, Darth, you have gotten quite heavy."
"I do hope you know what you're doing, old friend," Bail sighed.
Obi-Wan absolutely did not know what he was doing, but he figured that was pretty par for the course this past decade.
Admittedly, he had also not known what he was doing the last time he accepted sole responsibility for Anakin Skywalker, but this time Anakin Skywalker was dead so it'd all work itself out. Probably. Maybe.
"My name. Is not. 'DARTH'!" growled the walking corpse of Anakin Skywalker for the umpteenth time.
It was one of his favorite complaints, right after being forced to return to Tatooine and the weird smell of the bacta solution in the tank Obi-Wan had acquired from the Organas.
"Well, I'm certainly not calling you 'Vader'," Obi-Wan sniffed. "That's a ridiculous name."
Darth's frustration was palpable.
"'Darth'…" he ground out, "is a title. Not my name."
"And as we certainly aren't on a first name basis, Darth, I shall continue to refer to you by title alone."
"So you and Maul were on a first name basis, then?" Darth said it triumphantly, as though he had just played a winning hand of sabacc.
Obi-Wan considered. "Now that you mention it, I suppose we were. He always did seem to feel a special affinity for me—"
"Maul was nothing! He was weak!"
"Maul ultimately recognized the lies of the Sith for what they were," Obi-Wan pointed out mildly.
That shut Darth up.
Reva did not like Obi-Wan. In fact, he suspected that she might actually hate him. Unfortunately, she had developed quite a fondness for Luke. Obi-Wan had a feeling that she only stuck around on Tatooine because she didn't trust him around Luke.
Still, perhaps out of some perverse sense of duty, she regularly ventured out into the desert to deliver Obi-Wan his monthly shipment of goods smuggled from Alderaan (untraceably, of course).
The first time she had spotted Darth on one of these visits, Obi-Wan had been forced to physically restrain her to keep her from bludgeoning him to death with a saddlebag.
Darth, naturally, didn't help matters, instead choosing that moment to sneer, "Look at how far you've fallen, youngling, crawling to Kenobi for—"
It took every ounce of strength Obi-Wan possessed to manhandle Reva out of his hut.
For some reason, she didn't seem to find his explanation of "the man who betrayed you and killed your friends is dead; Darth here is simply a prisoner of war" convincing. Neither, for that matter, did Darth.
"Stop telling people I'm dead," Darth hissed.
"I'm sorry, did you say something?" Obi-Wan asked innocently. "I couldn't hear you."
"I'm starting to think you two deserve each other," Reva said, interrupting yet another petty argument (totally Darth's fault).
On another occasion, upon arriving just as Obi-Wan had begun his daily ritual of massaging scar cream into Darth's scalp: "Whatever weird, twisted game y'all are playing at, just keep me out of it."
Obi-Wan didn't bother looking up from his ministrations. "Just leave the packages in the usual spot, please."
Reva's exasperated groan was audible through the thick walls of Obi-Wan's hut.
"...."
"Pardon?"
Night had fallen, and Obi-Wan was focussing on the tiny stitches he was making in his eopie's tack by candlelight. Darth was stubbornly refusing to help, despite having recently been fitted with top-of-the-line Alderan prosthetics.
"Skywalker." It was mumbled, almost as though Darth was ashamed. Obi-Wan held his breath, not willing to do anything that might disrupt this gossamer thread of progress. "If he were… alive. What would he do?" Darth sounded wistful, almost.
Obi-Wan lodged his needle in the leather, freeing his hand to stroke his beard. He didn't need the Force to tell him that it was important to get this right.
"The Anakin I knew was fierce, headstrong. He hated admitting he was wrong," he began carefully.
"Wh—"
"I'm not finished. But he also had a sharp sense of justice, and he was immensely loyal. His friends loved him dearly for this, and it pained them to see him in need of help, but too proud to ask for it."
Darth was silent. The only sound in the hut was the flutter of his raspy breathing and the hiss of the candlewick.
"When Anakin was twelve, he snuck out of the Temple in the middle of the night. He had with him a very rare, very valuable artifact that he had retrieved from the Temple archives.
"You see, Anakin had met a girl, not much older than he was, in the lower levels of Coruscant, who had been sold into indenture as a child. Her master was cruel, and every year the interest on her debts grew.
"But together, they had devised a plan to buy her freedom…
"Anakin's absence was discovered, naturally, and when the Council investigated, it was revealed that the girl's story had merely been an elaborate scam. There was no master, no indenture. But it was too late to recover the stolen artifact; it had already disappeared into the black market."
Obi-Wan paused. His voice had gone suddenly, unexpectedly hoarse. His eyes felt wet. Unwise, on Tatooine.
"Anakin and his master were summoned before the Council. Anakin could have succumbed to fear and shame in that moment—after all he had just been revealed as a thief and a dupe. His master certainly did. But instead, he erupted in righteous fury—perhaps this one girl's story was false, but the overwhelming suffering in the lower levels of Coruscant was undeniable. How could the Jedi just sit on such wealth while others went without? He refused to admit any wrongdoing, because for him, it paled in comparison to the greater injustices of the galaxy.
"I never said anything to Anakin at the time, but I was so very, very proud of him."
Darth's eyes seemed suspiciously wet as well. That must be why they didn't look as yellow as usual.
"A few years later," Obi-Wan continued, soldiering on, knowing that if he stopped now his voice would betray him, "I happened to learn that the stolen artifact mysteriously found its way back into the Temple archives. I can only imagine the cost and effort it took to retrieve it where the Temple's own archivists failed."
He glanced over to where Darth was propped up against the wall. The softly flickering lights on his modified chest plate blinked through his pale, lightweight robes, a cold contrast to the warmth of the candlelight.
"You ask what Anakin would do if he were here. I think that the boy—the man —I knew would want to do good. To help others. And even if he had made mistakes, I believe he would do everything in his power to make things right."
Obi-Wan paused, letting the silence wash over them. From the corner came a sound that, from anyone else, might have been a muffled sob."
Then, a small voice: "I don't know if I can be that person anymore, Master."
Obi-Wan smiled. "I know, Anakin. I just need you to try."