Order 66 ~ Obi-Wan X OC

Tomb

*Obi-Wan's Pov*

After dodging a ridiculous amount of Storm Troopers and seeker droids, I finally made it to the door Tala had told me to get to. Her intercom had cut out for a few painfully long minutes so I couldn't reach her until a few minutes ago. She was disguised as an Empire Officer. Where she got the uniform, I'm not sure. Nor did I want to ask.

The large silver doors that lead to the secure sector were painted with the circular symbol of the Empire. The red resembled blood. I wondered if that's what it was supposed to look like. It is, after all, what the Empire was built on. Blood and death. 

I put the key into the lock and let the gears click until the doors began to open slowly. I walk in and the door shut behind me with a bang. When I look up from the ground, I'm sure my eyes are tricking me. 

"Ben, what is it?" Tala whispers into her comlink after a few moments of me not responding. 

I lift up the microphone to my lips. "I think I've just found out what they're hiding down here," I whisper back to make sure anyone around Tala doesn't hear me and blow her cover. "This place isn't a fortress. It's a tomb." My voice cracks as I approach an old friend of mine that was being preserved in some kind of substance.

Tera Sinube was his name. He was an older Jedi but he was a wonderful man. Tears pricked at my eyes as I continued down the hall, shock grasped at me. They had preserved the bodies of Jedi like they were trophies to be put on display. I knew some of these people. 

The scared expressions were frozen images of the fear they experienced the moment they died. I was too late to save them. 

My heart stops as I come upon the second to last tomb. It doesn't get much worse than a small youngling, no older than seven, still in his training robes. I stare in shock. 

Anakin did this? I couldn't wrap my mind around the small boy on Tatooine who did dangerous pod races to help out some random strangers turning into a murderer. It didn't feel real.

I made sure to look at each and every one of the Jedi, forcing myself to remember all the people I could've saved if only I were an hour earlier. 

But when I reached the last grave I've never wanted to unsee anything more than I ever have. I shut my eyes, forcing the welling tears to fall down my cheeks. My knees gave out in grief, throwing me to the ground. I opened my eyes, hoping that the person in the last tomb would change.

But Florence still stared back at me. Her green eyes were so full of abandon. So full of disbelief, grief, and unknown. She didn't know what was going to happen to her. I knew she shouldn't have gone to Corellia.

I've spent the last eight years coming up with new reasons for how she was still alive and why she hadn't contacted me yet. Eight years of blaming myself for not trying hard enough to keep her on Tatooine. 

Then, when I met Tala, she told me about this woman she had met on a transport from Tatooine to Corellia who changed her life. The more she talked about this woman, the more I realized that the woman she talked about was very similar to Florence. This woman lived for ten years on Corellia, she left for a few years, and now she was going home. 

One day, I asked for the name of the woman. She told me it was Aletia. Realizing that that was Florence's cover name, I told her I knew her. I told Tala that her real name was Florence. Come to find out Tala knew that but was still trying to protect Florence's identity. 

At that moment, I spilled everything about how Florence had disappeared and hadn't come back home to me. About how I blamed myself for it all and why I did.

Tala got real quiet, telling me that it wasn't my fault. It was hers. She said she'd asked Florence if she had a place she could stay since she really needed to find somewhere until she got back to her feet. Florence said she knew someone and so she brought Tala to her old job and asked her old manager, Dreft, if he could give her a job and a place to stay for a bit. 

Dreft told them to wait while he called someone, which seemed perfectly normal. At first. Until another man showed up who apparently scared Florence because her eyes got giant. When Tala said his name, I froze. Catoro. Catoro had shown up and called a friend who, according to Tala, wasn't a good man. When she told me it was Darth Vader who had taken Florence, I placed my head in my hands.

Only a few days before that, as Leia and I were trying to outrun some inquisitors, I find out that Anakin is alive. I knew that Anakin had become Darth Vader but I killed Vader. And to hear that he had lived through the fight on Mustafar...

Tala told me anyone who goes in as a prisoner for Vader didn't survive. Especially those who were Jedi sympathizers. I believed her.

I didn't want to believe Tala but now as I was looking up at Florence's body, I realized that she was right. 

I looked down at the pinky on my right hand, seeing the ring that Teeka had sold to me. I looked at her hands which were shielding her face in protection. There wasn't a ring there. 

Suddenly, I found the confidence to stand up again. It's what Florence would've done. 

"Oh my love," I cry under my breath as I look at her one last time. "It wasn't supposed to be like this."

A scream rips through the room on the other side of the metal door at the end of the hall. Leia. 

"Tala, I need a distraction," I speak into the comlink.

"Why, what's happened?" She responds worriedly. 

"Just do it, now!"