Chapter Text
Obi Wan could feel Anakin’s eyes boring into his back, and kept walking.
The gloom pressed in around them, pierced by the flashlights of the clones and their lightsabers. Their steps were quiet but the ancient stone structure caught and amplified the slight sound. That was probably the only reason Anakin wasn’t still arguing with him right now.
The underground passages of the burnt out and abandoned palace of a burnt out and abandoned city, left to collapse in silence hundreds of years ago. The maze-like halls they passed through towered above them, utterly black. So much space and impenetrable dark felt like perfect conditions for an ambush from above. Ash blew around their feet, whispering down from the charred shell above, into the stony depths they now searched.
The force was all but dead here. Staticky, buzzing, dry. It was another reason Anakin was so irritable.
Without the force, they could not sense their target. Or their enemy.
Their target was a Holocron, one that Count Dooku was interested in enough to retrieve himself. He was somewhere in these halls, searching, and hopefully unaware of their presence. The goal, which Anakin balked at, was not to engage him. They were to retrieve the holocron and get out without his notice. He could not know they were here, their access to sensitive intel was too precarious to risk arousing the count’s suspicion. But at the same time, he could not be allowed to retrieve the holocron. As such, stealth was required.
Obi Wan had a bad feeling about this. Stealth was not famously Anakin’s strong suit, but Obi Wan had lost the argument for his former padawan to stay back. Mostly by virtue of Anakin flat out refusing to even entertain the idea, citing Obi Wan’s recent injury. Obi Wan was fine, he had been cleared for duty two days ago, and had told Anakin he was being ridiculous. They had both started the mission irritated, and that was before they’d even gotten to the endless blank stone halls and grating force presence of the underground palace.
Obi Wan was sure the layout of these halls made some sort of sense if viewed from a distance, but while they were in them they just seemed to wind endlessly into the dark. They walked for hours, meeting dead ends, doubling back, and going in inadvertent circles, as a trooper updated a map that began to look like a youngling’s scribbles. Hopefully the count was having a similar experience. The force blocking meant that Obi Wan couldn’t actually sense Anakin’s mounting frustration, but he felt it anyway out of sheer familiarity.
The chamber where they found the holocron was no better lit than any of the others they had passed through. It was almost unremarkable, but it was the epicenter of the buzzing force dampening effect. The room was vast, circular, with four doorways quartering it. There were frayed webs of old rotted tapestries hanging on the walls, colors faded, subjects unclear. At the center of the room was an unmarked aged wooden box, sitting innocently on the floor.
They stepped in, and the clones fanned out, posting two guards and one scout for each doorway. Anakin and Obi Wan approached the box. Their eyes met across it.
“No way this isn’t trapped.” Anakin said.
“Agreed. I can’t sense anything with this blasted force blocking, but-“
There was a clatter as a clone’s weapon dropped to the ground.
They whipped around toward the sound, from the south doorway. The clones guarding it readied their weapons, pointing their lights into the dark. The clatter had been the scout’s weapon from further into the passage.
Then from the west doorway came another echoing clatter, a grunt, and the sound of a body dropping. The clones all trained their weapons on their respective doorways.
“Time to go.” Obi Wan said, “fall back, do not engage.” He reached for the box. There was no time to worry about traps, and with any luck, Dooku would get caught in any they did trigger.
The clones formed up around them, weapons trained on the north doorway where the red glow of a lightsaber was growing. Obi Wan lifted the box.
“We can take him!” Anakin insisted, starting forward.
“Anakin, no, we-“
The ancient box crumbled in Obi Wan’s grip, and he looked down to see himself clutching a Sith holocron in his bare hands.
“Master?” Anakin turned when Obi Wan didn’t finish his sentence. Time slowed as they both looked at the holocron in Obi Wan’s hands, and then back up at each other.
For a second Obi Wan thought nothing would happen.
Then the holocron seemed to pulse in his hands, and he started screaming.
“General Skywalker!”
Anakin opened his eyes. He was on the floor. He tasted ash in his mouth. Rex was above him, shaking him.
“I’m up.” He said. Rex straightened from where he knelt beside him. Anakin pushed himself upright. Usually he felt worse when he was getting shaken awake, but he actually felt…good? How suspicious.
His lightsaber lay on the ground beside him, extinguished. The room was choppily lit by the various flashlights the clones had been carrying, but all those flashlights were dropped to the ground now, along with the clones that had been carrying them. A few of them were sat up, and attempting to rouse each other. Rex had moved to kneel down next to Obi Wan.
Oh, kriff, Obi Wan!
Anakin scrambled to his feet and hurried to his master’s side. He was lying on the floor, very still, holocron and lightsaber dropped beside him. The dust and ash around him was disturbed, like he’d thrashed around. There was a thin trail of half dried blood from his lips into his beard.
“General Kenobi!” Rex was calling, but Obi Wan didn’t stir.
Anakin remembered reaching for him, reaching to get the holocron out of his hands before it could do something awful to him, remembered it had fallen from Obi Wan’s fingers. Obi Wan had screamed, and everything had been so bright.
The holocron sat quiescent on the ground, force dampening gone, appearing for all the world like a hunk of so much metal. It offered no clues as to what it might have done to his master.
“Master?” Anakin called. “Obi Wan?”
Everyone else was awake now. The clones were groaning, but getting to their feet. Whatever the holocron had done, it had only done it to Obi Wan. With the force clear again, Anakin reached out for him.
He was met with a blazing presence. It was unmistakably Obi Wan, but he was gloriously bright in the force, stronger than he had ever been. It was beautiful, and Anakin was drawn in like a plant turning toward the sun. The force had never felt like this for him, so warm and kind. Anakin felt invigorated, like the weight of the war, the order, the senate, all of it was gone. It was the most peaceful he had felt in years, possibly ever. Was this what meditation was supposed to feel like?
But it was fading. The light was dimming.
Obi Wan’s force signature was getting weaker!
“We need a MedEvac, now!” Anakin exclaimed.