Two Halfs of One Warrior • Obikin/Vaderwan One-Shots

Sear Me

• Summary: “So here we are, a failed Jedi, a Sith, and our imminent deaths. I leave it to you to choose how we will meet our demise, whether fighting or doing something else entirely.”

“You are insane,” Vader murmured.

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Pour yourself into me,
Our time approaches so near, that I sigh.
What danger in such an adorer?
We dance and the music dies.
We carry them all away,
As we glide through their lost eyes.
You lift me above myself,
With the ghostly lake of your mind.
Arise from your slumber in my arms.
Your beauty took the strength from me.
In the meadows of heaven,
We run through the stars.
Romantic in our tastes.
We are without excuse.
We burn in our lust.
We die in our eyes and drown in our arms.

(My Dying Bride, Sear me MCMXCIII)

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On the seventh day of winter of the fourth year of the Galactic Empire, Obi-Wan Kenobi awoke to the knowledge that the time of his death had come.

His first reaction was panic, blind searing panic that turned his vision white for a moment and stopped his heart in his chest. It was soon, far too soon. He was not ready: the teachings Qui-Gon had tried to impart still eluded him. And, more importantly, Luke was not ready. The child was only four years, nine months and eleven days old - Obi-Wan knew Luke’s exact age by heart, for he had been born on the same day Obi-Wan’s own heart had died, burnt to ashes on a river of fire.

The panic lasted only for a stilled heartbeat; after that, a lifetime of Jedi training took over. Obi-Wan swallowed, blinked twice, registered the notion, accepted that there was nothing he could do about it and let the panic turn into disappointment before he let it drift away in the currents of the Force.

With one last sigh he got out of his bed and set to his morning routine. He collected fresh water from the vaporator, made his tea and drank it under the rays of the dawning suns in the small patio overlooking the Jundland Wastes, then set towards the Dune Sea to meditate.

He made only two concessions to this fateful day: the first was to give one last loving look at the lightsaber that had once been Anakin’s, reverent fingers caressing the beautiful hilt as he asked the Force to let Luke have it when the time came. The second was to don, for the first time in years, his old robes – trousers, undertunic, tunic and tabards – and to clip his old lightsaber to his belt.

If he had to die, at least he would die as a Jedi.

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Death found him mid-morning on the dunes, and it came in the most unlikely form. He saw it coming from miles away, a steady trail in the sand marking its path through the desert.

“Hello there,” he said, his heart clenching as the astromech droid he had left into Bail Organa’s care stopped before him, chirping a greeting in an unusually subdued tone.

His eyes half-closed against the light of the suns, Obi-Wan reached out with a hand to pat the droid on its dome. Artoo beeped uncertainly, probably knowing that its presence was harbinger of a still too raw pain. Four years were not nearly enough to recover from the loss of the man whose absence loomed between them.

“I am glad to see you, old friend,” Obi-Wan reassured the affectionate droid, a tired smile on his lips.

Artoo acknowledged him with a short rotation of its dome, a gesture somehow akin to a timid purr, and offered him a pained beep. Obi-Wan didn’t reply. Some thing were better left unsaid.