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"If you loved Anakin Skywalker, then avenge him."
The words, uttered scarcely above a whisper, are as deafening as the sandstorm raging outside. Without meaning to, Obi-Wan turns—he can only vaguely see Vader's shape, slumped against the wall, but Obi-Wan still feels his presence in the Force. It makes him flinch back, almost instinctively. Where Anakin shone as bright as the sun, Vader is an empty void, a hollow pit deep enough to drown in, as black as the shadows pressing in around them.
Truthfully, Obi-Wan isn't sure how they got here. One minute, they were encircling each other, lightsabers ignited, Vader practically gasping for air, almost crumpling to his knees—the next, they were taking shelter from the whirlwind of sand and dust tearing through the planet, huddled inside a too-small cave, as far apart as the space would allow. It passed by Obi-Wan in a blur, as hazy as the sandstorm itself, but somehow, he managed to drag Vader through the rocky terrain, despite the blinding winds, despite his own blinding panic. Somehow, they are here. They are safe. As safe as they could be, surrounded by the shadows.
Ten years on Tatooine, and Obi-Wan has never learned how to tell when a sandstorm is coming. He wonders, for a moment, if Vader had known that one was imminent. Anakin had always known—for all that he complained whenever they went to a desert planet on a mission, Obi-Wan thought Anakin never looked quite as home in the Temple as he did among the shifting sand dunes and the barren cliffs. Anakin would look at the horizon, feel the subtle change in the winds, and say, Better wrap this up quick, Master. There's a storm coming. I give it half an hour, tops.
Tatooine had never left Anakin, Obi-Wan knows this now. Tatooine had bled into Anakin's skin, a perpetually festering wound. Sometimes, Obi-Wan thinks that's what Anakin has become, all that's left of him—a lingering wound, burrowed under Obi-Wan's skin.
Because Anakin isn't here. Anakin is dead.
"What good would it do?" Obi-Wan says, his tone determinedly light. Vengeance is not the Jedi way, he can almost hear himself say, remembers cradling Anakin's calloused hands in his own, carefully wiping the blood off his bruised knuckles. A lifetime ago, now, those days when Anakin had been small enough to hold.
"I spilled the blood of your dearest brother," Vader says, spits the words like poison from his mouth. "I have spilled the blood of all your brothers and sisters. I will do so again, if you let me live."
"I made my choice, Darth. Don't burden me with yours."
Vader makes a strange sound, like a sharp, rasping cough. It takes Obi-Wan a second to realize that it's meant to be a laugh, perhaps a cut-off chuckle. Anakin had been fond of those, snorts of laughter he'd always smother with a studiously innocent look, when he knew Obi-Wan was looking.
"That's it, then?" Vader sneers. His voice is deceptively soft, his vocabulator sputtering, fading in and out. "You wash your hands of me? You absolve yourself of your crimes?"
You have done that yourself, Obi-Wan wants to say. Something long tucked-away wells up in his chest. I am not your failure, Obi-Wan, Vader had said, and it had been a kindness. One that, perhaps, Vader didn't understand, might never understand—but it is a kindness all the same.
Obi-Wan leans back, trying to ignore his sore limbs aching in protest.
"What crimes," he says flatly.
"Traitor!" Vader growls. "Liar! You and all the Jedi! You are traitors to the Empire! To peace!"
Obi-Wan hums, in the way he knows Anakin found especially infuriating. "From a certain point of view—then yes, I suppose."
With a wordless roar of rage, Vader leaps to his feet, and Obi-Wan's hand flies to his lightsaber. All around them now, shadows, pressing in from the edges of Obi-Wan's vision, falling, encircling them. The world is shrinking, narrowing down to this small space, this patch of desolate rock, the two of them suspended in the dark.
Obi-Wan has to squint to make out Vader's hulking frame, pacing frantically, furiously. His harsh breaths echo off the stone walls, unnervingly loud as the words pour out of him in a ceaseless torrent:
"You—you sit there and you mock, but you're weak! You have feared me all these years, from the moment we met, and that is why you hide. Why you have hidden yourself all this time. Why you can't face me even now. You hide behind your ideals, behind people you hardly know, people you claim to care for—but you are a coward, Obi-Wan. A coward!"
"You want me to face you?" Obi-Wan says. "Haven't I already? I see you, Darth, and I see a man blinded by greed."
Vader slams his fist against the wall, hard enough that Obi-Wan hears the stone crack. The ground trembles beneath them.
"Greed!" Vader snarls. He jabs a finger at Obi-Wan. "You know nothing—you understand nothing! Not a single thing! How could you, when you never cared to look beyond your precious Code! You never cared—"
"I cared far too much," Obi-Wan says coldly. "That was my mistake."
"You didn't care enough!" Vader bellows. "The boy you raised, the boy you say you loved—and yet you didn't see how he suffered. Skywalker never stood a chance. I may have killed him, but you—you, Obi-Wan, were the lever. You gave me the blade."
Obi-Wan swallows against the burning in his throat. I am not your failure, Obi-Wan rings in his ears. It had been a kindness. It had been absolution, and so Obi-Wan had washed his hands. But perhaps Vader can still see it—Obi-Wan's hands soaked in blood, stained red and dripping, the same blood Vader spilled.
I am what you made me.
The ground is still shaking, and Obi-Wan braces himself against the wall to stay upright. Clouds of dust rise in the air as loose debris falls from the ceiling. Vader can bring this whole cave down on their heads if he wished it, if Obi-Wan doesn't stop him, and then that would be the end of it. There would be no funeral pyres, no pomp and ceremony. Just the two of them and the shadows, the river of blood between them, laid to rest under a barren grave.
But no—that isn't true, is it? Obi-Wan had buried Anakin's lightsaber—had buried it with his own, thinking I could not save you, I could not protect you, but I can lay you to rest. If I can't wipe up the blood, then let me give you this. And yet every day—ten years, and every day of it, Obi-Wan hears the dirge, Anakin's crystal pealing through the Force like a death knell. Feels it still, that last remnant of a dead sun, the barest flicker of persistent light.
There could be no rest, no peace, for either of them.
"Whatever I did, whatever I didn't do—" Obi-Wan starts. It sounds weak to his own ears, and he wets his lips, tries again. "It doesn't change anything. It's done. It's over. My friend is dead."
"Then kill me!" Vader roars. "Avenge him! What stays your hand, Master? Strike me down, if you ever loved me at all! Avenge Anakin Skywalker!"
And then the ground stills. Suddenly, Vader is stumbling back, nearly doubling over on his knees as he gasps for air. Obi-Wan is on his feet, lurching forward before he's even aware of it, but Vader jerks away from his reach.
Anakin, Obi-Wan thinks, then stops.
Vader is almost sagging against the wall, still gasping lungful after lungful of air, his vocabulator crackling. Dread roots Obi-Wan to the spot. Each ragged, shallow breath shoves a blade hilt-deep in his chest.
Obi-Wan waits and waits, his hands hanging uselessly at his sides. It might have been seconds, or minutes, or hours, but finally, at last, Vader's breathing slows.
"If you loved me, you would have killed me," Vader says, his voice barely a rasp now. "Where was your mercy, when you left me to burn?"
Obi-Wan feels his heart hammer against his ribs. A throb of pain echoes the beat, thrumming in his bones.
"Mercy doesn't defeat the enemy," he says tightly.
That strange noise again—the hacking cough that might have been a laugh, once. "Then why?"
Because you were my sun, Obi-Wan thinks. My little sun. Training you was a burden, but it's a burden I will carry over and over, if I could do it all again. I'm a better Jedi for having known you, and I don't think I would have ever crawled out of bed after losing Qui-Gon, if it hadn't been for you. I don't know where I would be, if I hadn't trained you. If I hadn't loved you. I kept your lightsaber, because it's all I have of you. I tried to bury it so I could forget—how much I loved you and how much I failed you by loving you—but I can't let it go, even now. Because you're still my sun, and sometimes I wake up and don't know how to crawl out of bed. Sometimes I think I don't ever want to wake up at all. Because you're gone. You have to be gone, because I don't know how to love you if you're not.
Outside, the sandstorm rages on. In those howling winds, Obi-Wan hears Anakin's screams as he burned, as he scrabbled desperately at the black sands.
Obi-Wan doesn't answer.
What good would it do? Anakin is dead.