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Looking into his eyes now is almost impossible, all of your courage and all of your strength aren’t enough for you to keep his gaze any longer. It’s hard for you to recognize him like this: his face distorted with the greatest anger, his eyes of an unnatural amber color, so similar to the inhospitable environment that surrounds the both of you and that you know will be his grave eternally. Anakin doesn’t exist anymore, you force yourself to think, in a vain and already failed attempt to convince yourself because you don’t even have the courage to take his life nor to stay here and watch him die in the most atrocious way. You decided to abandon him to the molten lava, you will leave him here while his flesh burns and melts and you will try to run as fast as possible away from his screams and from the awareness that you lost him forever. It’s that same molten lava that burns inside you, bringing an unbearable pain that starts in your hearts and flows through all of your limbs and it burns, it turns to ashes everything that encounters in its merciless path.
I hate you. His cry echoes in your mind and it feels like hearing it from his lips all over again. Every time it’s like a stab to the heart. You know it’s true and you think this is the reason for so much pain.
You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you. The last lie hurts, maybe more than everything else, or maybe the suffering is so much that you can’t even figure out what hurts the most anymore. You thought, for an instant, to tell him the truth, but only lies escape from your mouth. It hurts, knowing that he will die without knowing that you loved him with all of yourself, not like a brother, not like a futile lover, but like something more than that, you can’t find a word to describe him. You harbored this feeling for an entire life, silently, with no one knowing or noticing, you never let it show, you never let it arouse suspicion and you played the role of the Master perfectly. And when you saw the way he looked at her, his Padmé, his wife, you pretended not to know, you pretended not to feel yourself dying slowly inside every time you thought of his love for her and not for you.
Sometimes you find yourself thinking about how things would have gone if you told him all the truth. Maybe your paths would have parted, maybe Anakin would have had a new Master and maybe you wouldn’t be looking for the last time at the face of the man you loved. You would have saved him.
It’s a moment. Only a small, miserable moment which is enough to make you understand that it’s the end. You look one last time at his eyes while he tries to climb and to move away from the river of lava between his laments of pain, clinging to the terrain with his artificial hand. The shards of it slip through his metal fingers and they seem to make fun of his desperate need to live, the hope of surviving slipping through his fingers like the soil that shatters in his fist and leaves his mutilated body still, waiting for a death it doesn’t want and from which it knows it can’t escape.
It’s a moment before the end. You meet his gaze for the last instant before turning and going away and it’s like looking at a scared child. And you’re motionless, you think you are, but you’ve already started to move. His face is smeared with tears of fear and pain, with mud and ash. Walking is hard, the soil is unstable under your feet and threatens to trip you at every step. You see his dried lips move, yet you believe you’ve already heard him saying those few words. As if you already know everything.
« Save me, Obi-Wan. »
It’s nothing more than a whisper, weak, overcome by the explosions and the sound of the thick river of lava. And it seems like it was another person to say those words, so distant, so different from that inhuman cry of hate, like the noise of a beast, that Anakin gave you.
But you’re not surprised when it seems like you’re watching your own body while you lift him from the ground and you cradle him in your arms, running away as fast as you can from that shore of hell. You know his save me it’s not restricted to this only circumstance, you know it’s a prayer for help. Anakin wants to be saved from the darkness eating his strong soul, a darkness fighting against the good side in him that struggles to beat the evil one, but it can’t do it. Not alone. And maybe, you think, this is the fate of your young Padawan, condemned to an existence on the brink between light and darkness, good and evil, in an eternal fight with no winners.
You almost stumble and it’s only while you try not to fall that you realize that you’re running. But you fall on your knees that sink in the dark gravel, your hold on Anakin’s body is firm and safe. You would like to say to him that everything is going to be alright and that everything is going to be fixed, but you can’t because you fear that he will turn to ashes in your arms, leaving you holding some remains that the wind will take away from you with no mercy. And you will hold nothing but pain and emptiness. But Anakin is alive in your arms and you take his metal hand as if you want to make sure that this is real. You feel those fingers lacing with yours and one more time you can sense that undying will to survive, of life that wants to live.
« I don’t want to die … » he mutters, spasms of pain shaking his whole body.
« You won’t die, I won’t let that happen. » you reply, sure of your words. You would walk with your bare feet on the molten lava if that would be needed to save his life, even if it means burning until you cease to exist.
You see him nodding lightly and then he closes his eyes, resting his head on your chest. You feel the fear growing strong in you, you are afraid that you have broken the promise you just made, but the light rise and fall of Anakin’s chest makes you understand that he is still with you, on the edge of his strength and near death, but still with you. And it’s all that matters in this moment.
You get up, you strive to gather your what is left of your strength to bring him back on the ship and leave this planet of horror forever. During the walk that seems infinite you speak to him and you know that he hears you because sometimes his face, distorted in pain, changes lightly and you can even see a small smile on his lips. You tell him memories, legends … it feels like going back at the time when Anakin was still a child and everything was simple. You tell him each one of your thoughts with no shame, even the silliest ones and you ask him if he still remembers the stories you used to tell when he couldn’t sleep and when he would find you asleep and sitting next to his bed the next morning. He nods. They’re only futile words but they serve to keep him conscious until you will be sure that if he closes his eyes it won’t be forever.
When you get into the ship, you cast a glance at a still unconscious Padmé and you feel terribly guilty because you almost forgot about her. And about the baby. Anakin’s baby. You put him down with care on the opposite side and you ask the two droids to take care of the both of them during the way back home and to let you know about any possible dangers for the health of husband and wife.
Before leaving, you take just a second to look at them: so young, consumed by a love that threatens to kill them both, a love you understand far too much. You know you can’t be part of their life, you know there is no place for you in their family and you know this is only right and proper. Anakin and Padmé will be happy with their child. And deep inside you know that this is what he desires and what he deserves.
No matter how strong is the love you feel for him, you will do anything to save him.
To save them.