rebels → anakin skywalker

XXXI

"the only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive"

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OCTAVIA hadn't moved from her bed in hours.

Perfectly awake, she lay in silence, staring up at the white ceiling of the medical room on Polis Massa. Obi-Wan had found her crumpled body on Mustafar, however his former brother was nowhere to be seen. Desperate to ensure that she would live, he did not hesitate to lift her into his arms and anxiously dash back to the ship, escaping to the isolated planetoid.

The female Jedi did not know how long she had been there, nor how long she had been awake. Everything was a blur, minutes morphing into one another as she replayed the previous events in her head over and over again. Even when the nurses were taking tests and checking up on her, she was silent. She hadn't eaten, she hadn't slept. If she wasn't wincing at the occasional throbbing headaches, she was numb. The young woman could feel her desperate need for sleep, but she refused to. All she could see was the darkness is Anakin Skywalker's eyes, and closing her own only plagued her with the reminder.

After some time, Octavia heard the door open as Obi-Wan entered. He looked exhausted, clearly just as effected by the turn of events as she was. Moving her eyes away from their trained spot, she sat up slightly as she tried her best to offer a pained smile to the older Master.

"How are you feeling?" He asked, taking a seat beside her.

"Physically or mentally?" She attempted to joke, "because both are pretty damn awful."

"It was a very serious wound, Octavia. The nurses believe that your survival was a miracle." He spoke.

Octavia stifled a laugh at that. "What are miracles if they aren't sheer luck?"

Obi-Wan attempted to smile slightly, leaving the two in a beat of silence.

"Did you...see him?" Octavia asked, her voice meek. She didn't even need to say his name and her eyes were glassing over.

Obi-Wan sighed. "No. He'd gone without a trace. Nobody has seen or heard from him since."

Octavia nodded slightly. Her heart ached as her eyes began to delicately glass over. "I couldn't do it, Obi-Wan. I couldn't stop him. I thought that he would listen to me, I thought that I could...convince him-"

Obi-Wan placed his hand in hers, clutching it tightly. "This is not your fault, Octavia. Anakin was seduced by the darkness, something you had no control over. You weren't to know, none of us were."

A tear slipped from her eye. "I tried so hard not to believe it. I had to pinch myself to make sure that it wasn't a nightmare. But when I looked at his eyes, I saw...he wasn't the man he once was."