One Prick to Bleed

Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Death.

This is real death.

Reflected in glossy black, marked by scorches and burns.  This is real death, she thought.  Before this day, before this moment, she had never seen it.  Funeral pyres were not death.  Those bodies, shadowed behind brilliant, dancing flames, were not death.  The souls were gone, having slipped peacefully, naturally away.  Death was long absent from them, those bodies lying empty and shelled on the stone.  Death had not come to them, had only accepted them.

This is real death.

Death was without time.  An eternity must have passed, but she doubted eternity meant anything for death.  Death also had no words, no language, no expression.  She felt her lips move to say, “I’ve never seen a dead body before.  I’ve never seen death.”

Nothing . . . she could not even whisper.

Sabé could only close her eyes.  Finally.

This is real death.

Someone shifted behind her.  One of the palace guards.  Sabé opened her eyes, absorbing the deep, glossy floor.  More death awaited them.  She had passed it in search of this one, had passed so much. 

She slowly turned her heavy yet empty head to Obi-Wan.  He had not moved since he had softly validated this death.  The words had rendered him to perfect stillness.  She wondered numbly how much time had passed, or if it had stopped.  But the quiet, subdued lives behind her were brushing against this stillness; time must be passing, life had not stopped, not completely.

They just had to find it.

Sabé started to move.  Pain seemed to burst from her knees, and she almost cried out at the shock of feeling.  But she stifled it.  Only her battle skirt whispered as she shifted to stand.

A hand suddenly clenched her wrist.  Enclosing it.  Stopping everything.

“Wait.” 

Sabé swallowed, frozen.  One word, but it had been choked out, thrust through hard anguish.  Obi-Wan’s hand gripped her small wrist like a vice.  She feared, for a tiny instant, he would drown her again.

Maybe he sensed her fear, because he finally turned to her.  She almost gasped, but she had no breath.  Obi-Wan Kenobi’s eyes were not naked with pain, only thinly shrouded by a threadbare veil she felt, if pulled only a little tighter, strained a little more, would unravel completely.

“Just . . .” Obi-Wan’s frayed eyes fell away from her face, and Sabé’s heart wrenched.  “Just a moment,” he said, a soft plea. 

Sabé nodded, her throat too tight to speak. 

Obi-Wan bowed his head over his fallen Master.  His hand on her wrist tightened for a brief, very painful moment, but Sabé uttered not a sound.  She kept very still, her eyes on Obi-Wan’s trembling profile.  She held no awareness of her breathing, only the way the Jedi’s silent inhale seemed to draw in the inky, lost depths of the floor.  Something soft and whispery seemed to undulate from within her, but she could not concentrate or focus on it.  Then Obi-Wan exhaled, his shoulders seeming to roll, slide down with the silently released breath.  His hold on her eased gently, soothingly.

Another moment passed, and Sabé realized she was kneeling beside Obi-Wan at the moment of his life. 

Obi-Wan released her hand before she could absorb this, could fully comprehend its spinning effect.  She watched as Obi-Wan Kenobi lifted his dead mentor into his arms with gentle grace that should not be physically possible.  It would be absurd, if not for the intense concentration on the young but aged man’s face.