Chapter 43

4.9K 101 115
                                    

Death is not quiet

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

Death is not quiet. It does not hang in the air. It chokes down your throat and floods your lungs, catches your heart, pulls at every vein inside your body. No one slips into it quietly, not inside, at least.

Circe can feel Anakin's body failing him. She does not hear it anymore—that strange power was sucked out of her the moment her lightsaber found its target—but she feels him falling apart. The Force is not kind in this way. In how she can feel him fading, his ragged breathing, the heaving of his ruined body.

Death is not quiet. She is screaming.

Obi-Wan can hear her all the way down the hall, and somehow he knows what's happened before he truly knows. Only one thing could terrorize her the way she sounds. Only one thing could force a cry like that out of her throat.

When he finds her, cradling Anakin in her arms and screaming blood onto the dark stone, there is a hole that tears itself through his chest.

"Circe," He says, panicked, hands scrambling towards his Padawan, "Circe, what have you done?"

"I didn't mean to!" She cries. Screams. Her hand pressed to the wound in his stomach. "Help me, please, it was an accident! I didn't— Obi-Wan!" She shouts, looking to him desperately for help.

He can't find anything to say. His mind is blank, only the knowledge that he is dying, he is dying, filters in. Loud, and painful, and cruel.

Circe looks away hastily, her hair shimmering around her shoulders. "Anakin," She sobs, "Don't go. I'm sorry. Please, don't leave me."

He fades in and out of consciousness, his life slipping through her hands like sand. She shakes him, begs him to stay with her, begs him to keep his eyes open.

"Circe," Obi-Wan says quietly, shell-shocked. He is hollow and crumbling.

"Anakin, I'm not going anywhere. You found me," She wails, "You found me, now please don't go!"

"Circe, he's not coming back."

"HE HAS TO." She snarls, face slick with shining tears. She turns back to him, frantic and afraid to let him go. Afraid to take her hands from him.

Obi-Wan tries to pull her away and she nearly claws his face to pieces. She cannot let him go. She cannot turn away from his body, from the life Force that is slipping from him.

It is him that is slipping away. She can feel him leaving, and it is the worst feeling she has ever had.

His light, that great warmth that she cursed so hatefully, it is draining from the room. The very sun dimming in the sky. She can feel his body getting colder, feel his presence pulling out of the room.

Death is jarring—it's wrong. It is thick and dripping from the walls, hanging from her limbs and sticking to her hair. She feels the Force shudder around her, trying to make room for the monstrous thing she has done. It pulses and ebbs, offended. Affronted. The taking of a life is a jagged cut in the smooth, still face of the Force. It is wrong.

Angels Like You | (Out of Date)Where stories live. Discover now