Star Wars: Edge of Hope

Chapter Forty Three: What the Blind Eye Sees....

The island shudders as the shrieking dagger like fingers of the Darkside slip down through the islands flesh into the core. Deep below the surface as the blow strikes the ancient gate Maul glowers as he watches the red glow being pulled through the crack in the center of the weathered stone's eye. There has been a shift...he can feel it and he knows his prey will have felt it too...OLD things stretching their sleeping limbs, preparing for their rise. High above him the trap had been set, Umbra had fulfilled her part of the pact, and gained a bit of what she'd lost back by denying Kenobi the solace he'd fashioned to alleviate his guilt. She watched as the disheveled JEDI picked themselves up, their eyes wide as one by one they looked in her direction, shock and horror.
But most of all...FEAR.

ObiWan: What have you done?

Umbra: Is that concern for me or yourself? I do want to ask something , Master Kenobi, it's something which has always vexed me. I could never keep myself from wondering...Did you ever...even for the smallest, briefest second think of us? Even once for a moment?

Obi-Wan dropped his gaze as Umbra exhaled in satisfaction. She wouldn't have believed him no matter what he said. It was near impossible to see the man from her childhood memories linked to the man now before her. This man on his knees surrounded by pools of blood. Umbra knew there was no room for selfish feelings or ideations. JEDI were taught to let go, to forget...you might even say breaking a JEDI's hold on the illusion of their humanity and turning their thoughts away from themselves...was what later in their lives became their fates. No one can survive the breaking of heart and betrayal of a souls call to another, not even a JEDI... Obi-Wan Kenobi was the proof of this theory...in so many ways. He had lost the one thing he'd tried to hold onto tighter than any other. The last thread... the possibility, the haunting decision he never made, when the thread was cut...Obi-Wan was no longer the man she loved. He gave everything tos the JEDI, he knelt holding her as only a man, but rose as MASTER JEDI OBI-WAN KENOBI. An all together different creature, so as Umbra watched the fear dancing through his expressions, she knew his concern wasn't for the lost child he'd sent into exile. It was the fear of failing those he'd devoted his life to protecting, those he'd failed to save, and those he realized were beyond his reach only too late.  And despite the anger inside her, Umbra felt pity for him, pity for the broken man bent and molded into empty shell of what had once been part of her. 

Umbra: I pity you, grandfather. I had considered perhaps the difficulty of the choices you'd faced. But...my mother's blood is on your hands, and no soul saved...no family reunited...no amount of pain endured, can change that. You failed her,....just as you failed yourself all those years ago on Mandalore. The fear of losing what you loved wasn't as great as the fear of losing a bond to withered legends and lies of noble intentions. That's right, even we can feel pity, even I...the shadow of the someone you once loved that no longer exists except in your memory. The next time we meet I will take the only hope you have left. I will revisit upon you every pain you inflicted on me...and then grandfather...I will leave you to drown in your sorrow and shame.

Obi-Wan's face pulled down focusing on her words, building walls between the soft memories and the hard realities he knew would come, but he couldn't help marveling at the beauty in this twisted creature before him. Umbra turned heading for the stone ledge overhanging the wild sea below. The dark waters still hurling themselves against the shoreline as they threw out their white foamy arms to kiss the rock face. As Umbra walked to the edge of the cliff Obi-Wan came sprinting out the stone archway. As the fading light of the sun fell behind the storm clouds, Umbra felt her eye moisten and reaching back into the dark parts she kept locked away from the light, she felt the old flames licking at the ashy cacoon of the little girl that never breathed another full breath again. Umbra was a willing servant to the will of the Dark Side, it offered her the freedom from those thoughts, relief from the difficult truths she didn't want to face...it let her exist without the pain of remembering. Umbra looked down into the deep dark waves below her...she couldn't help but laugh at herself...even after all this time, she was still holding onto the fantasy that would never be reality. It was too late. There is no going back...not anymore.