EAST OF EDEN ( anakin s. ) ✔️

032 | The Coin of Fate..

━━━━━━ ༻ 🌅 ༺ ━━━━━━
" the coin of fate "
...
━━━ ༻ CHAPTER THIRTY TWO ༺ ━━━

          "HELP ME, MASTER OBI-WAN," Ahsoka's plea came through the R2-D2's speakers, seeking to end the broadcasted message on a note that left behind only its despair's bitterness. "I cannot do this alone." What initially came to him as a troubling worry to see R2 return to Coruscant on short notice and without Anakin abroad the small starship, turned to a surprising relief of seeing Ahsoka Tano alive and breathing; a relief otherwise too short lived once her words started being grasped and properly taken in. Now, left in darkness with the droid, her words turned to stones and wrapped around his ankles, dooming him to sink to the depths of the bottomless ocean of that realization he refused, in suffocated dizziness, to accept as it was.

He stumbled out of the storage room beside the hangar area without a single glance back at R2. A part of Obi-Wan's soul had been lost to the doubt, worry and downright fear that Ahsoka's words had managed to seed into him for consideration and that which was missing compelled him to disregard the droid friend completely, even if such a picture painted him as the coward, running away from the piled evidence.

Some sort of sickness tangled his steps as soon as they strayed away from the door he had no knowledge of even closing. This nauseated feeling gripped him tight around the throat and made him into a man who had returned to land after ages of being lost to the cradles of some furious ocean, instead of a Jedi Master trying to make sense of what information had been shoved onto him.

How should he trust the veracity of this burden? He hasn't seen or heard from Ahsoka for two years and this is the first thing she tells him? That his Anakin is being compromised to darkness by Eden, of all people... The same Anakin who had Qui-Gon convinced he had found the Chosen One; the very same Eden who restored the Jedi Order to its former glory. How could darkness possibly spring from something embodying good and light?

Obi-Wan's first instinct had been to dismiss Ahsoka's words for lies she has been manipulated into believing by whatever places and entourages she had the misfortune of spending her time with, but after hearing out all she had to say... he felt the noose of doubt tightening around his neck, cutting the air that would usually reach his mind and clear his thoughts before they turned to a storm and thundered as an echo of his panic-riddled heart.

Having been to Anope once did not help his will power. All those civilizations Ahsoka mentioned were not made up names, but civilizations whose effigies were decorating the surface of the single most potent planet worthy to be considered a holy center to the Force. Naturally, upon his visit, he too had wondered with the innocence of an astonished believer: why Anope of all places? What was so special there to have drawn not just one great Force-sentient civilization to build a temple, but countless other, over the course of billions of years, perhaps from as far back as the moment Anope had first turned habitable?

What Ahsoka presented to him was an explanation at the very least to that question that had danced unbeknownst to its importance at the back of his mind: they all came to Anope because of the prophecy and most of them died because of it too.

An interruption to his thoughts came in the shape of a figure becoming a pillar blocking his path. Dazed beyond recognition and with madness slowly contorting his usually serene expression, Obi-Wan raised his eyes and met Mace Windu, whose oblivion to the distress of his friend was immediately blamed on something existing between the stress of the war and the news he came to share.

"I take you heard the news," Master Windu puffed, slightly more amused than Obi-Wan would have expected him to be at such a time and especially being met with such a disarranged version of himself. With a deep sigh, Mace lifted his arms and crossed them at his chest, "I was just coming to get you caught up on this, but it seems news travels faster than an agent of the Force ever could. Cannot say I am surprised though. It is not every day that the Grandmaster chooses to abandon his post. I expect the Senate will be roaring about this for weeks on end-"