Chapter Text
It takes so little consideration for Vader to finally pinpoint the Force signature invading his space station. The periodic appearance of his former Master over the years has become something of a cheap thrill. Nothing beats facing off against Obi-Wan Kenobi.
When he meets him in the corridor, the contrast between what he remembers of his old Master and how he appears before him now is jarring.
Before him, desert-leathered fair skin; stark, fine hair bleached white too soon by the dual rays of binary stars. Set into that once-familiar face, the very same blue-grey eyes of old; wise and impish, tormented by soul-deep anguish. His stance is poised, light, effortless despite obvious signs of aging - just the same, just the same, Vader thinks deliriously, fevered by his old Master's abrupt appearance: always so, when we encounter one another in this way.
Form III: Soresu, the way of the Mynock. First two fingers outstretched toward their target, parallel to the ominous cerulean 'saber as it casts its deathly light from above. An invitation - a defense - a standoff.
And yet, for all that this encounter resembles all the others in every way that matters, this feels different. Obi-Wan–no. No. Kenobi. Kenobi seems more sure of himself than he ever has… or perhaps there is a certain resolve, here, where Vader has never before gotten a glimpse.
There is much more on the line here and now, with his son here—Padmé's son, Padmé—and Vader is no idiot. He knows that steely glint to Kenobi's gaze just as intimately as he knows every other desperate, despairing expression that has ever passed over the Jedi Master's face.
So long as he is alive, he will keep Vader from his own child. And so he must die.
"When I left you," Vader rasps through his respirator, his breath a mechanical, measured thing. "I was but the learner; now, I am the master."
"Only a master of evil, Darth." The words are pained, as if they are forcibly ripped from him. He hesitates on Vader's next heavy-handed lunge, only just barely jumping out of the way. He stumbles, his graceful poise slipping from his grasp. "Oh, Anakin," he starts, sounding choked up, and the name makes Vader hiss in a confusing conglomeration of metaphysical pain and lurid rage. "Oh, Anakin. I love you."
Love. What a weak, pathetic thing it is. Vader's grip stutters just so on the next clash of 'sabers, a firework of blue and red and purple dancing together to the hum of their respective Kybers.
"You mean that you once loved him," Vader grits out. A pain blooms behind his eyes, a whisper of a bond-that-once-was. "You mean that you loved him before I killed him."
"No," Kenobi's voice cracks, near-hoarse from the desperation choking him. "I loved him, once, and I continue to love him now. I feel disappointed, betrayed, hurt, stars, I've been half-dead since Mustafar, but I cannot hate you."
"I am not him." Vader spits his name like the most vicious of toxins: "I killed your Anakin."
Despite the deathly glow of a red 'saber locked against his, Kenobi knocks his forehead to the sleek, glossy black of Vader's helmet. "Believe what you want," he whispers, barely heard over the heavy hum between them. "You may kill me, Anakin. But don't lie to me. Don't pretend that this Vader persona you have created to protect yourself from more pain and suffering is the one killing me."
Vader's breath, regulated though it is through his suit, stutters.
"All that I have done, I have done for you," Kenobi chokes out, the tears that have been sparkling along grey-blue irises finally deigning to fall. "There is nothing left of me to offer for I have given you everything that I am." Blue gives ground to red, a perfectly honest and deliberate surrender. As the white-hot crimson of Vader's lightsaber singes the threadbare collar of the Jedi Master's cream-colored tunic, Vader abruptly feels all the anger drain out of him like a pulled plug in a tub. "I have loved you… and so I will finally let you go."
With trembling, black-leather-clad prosthetic hands, Vader halts the course of the bleeding plasma blade. "Why do you tell me this? Why now, why ever?" He isn't sure the answer will satisfy him, but the incessant need in him to find out will have him drowning if he cannot drudge up the answer.
A painfully Obi-Wan grin graces the old man's weathered face, turning up in one corner higher than the other in a lopsided little smile, as charming as it ever was before. "Why, dramatic last words, I suppose." The smile doesn't last nearly long enough. In its place, a melancholic, wistful look falls over his features. "I came here to die at your hands… and yet, there was still too much left unsaid."
Despite everything, this admission is crushing. Vader's limbs, detached though they've been for decades now, itch with a renewed sense of scorching pain. That Kenobi's last regret isn't him, but rather simply involves him... "Liar," he bites out, the words so harsh and needy and desperately clawing that his throat feels shredded and raw. "You're trying to trick me. To convince me—convince me to let down my defenses, and you'll strike me down. What a fool, you take me for."
"Anakin. I've had so many opportunities to end your reign," Kenobi beseeches, one wrinkled old hand gripping the black cloth at Vader's shoulder. "Don't mistake my failure as incompetence. I am–compromised. To the highest degree. You were like a brother to me, Anakin. A best friend."
"A best friend you burned! Betrayed! Destroyed! You do not love me, Kenobi, nor did you ever. You only think you loved me because it is the only way to excuse the guilt and disgust you feel for someone you were meant to teach."
"Allow me, please," Kenobi interrupts, breathless. "Allow me to prove to you, Anakin, that you can come back from this. That you can be loved despite everything you have done." The grip on Vader's shoulder tightens. "We can work together. Reconstruct the system from the inside. I can–" A pained noise escapes Kenobi's mouth, as if the suggestion itself is anything as powerful as the 'saber still trained against his throat. "I can introduce you to your children. Don't you see, Anakin? We can start again."
"Children…?" Vader begins, faint.
"Children," Kenobi confirms firmly.
With a heavy-handed swipe of his dominant hand, Vader slices through the circuitry hidden behind an identification screener. He drags Kenobi through the sliding doors as they rapidly slide together, definitively shutting out hundreds of his nearest 'troopers from the military hangar he has subsequently trapped them in. There are other doors along the walls, but with a deafening crunch of a curled leather-bound metal hand, Vader rips the remaining wiring from them, rendering the doors useless.
And with that, Darth Vader spirits away with Obi-Wan Kenobi.
.-..-..-..-..-..-..-.
His appearance on the Falcon is not, strictly speaking, regarded with celebration and open arms. Indeed, the minute the exit ramp vacuum-seals shut, three blasters subsequently train on the black-clad nightmare fuel that is Vader. With no hesitation, Vader retaliates by throwing Obi-Wan against the wall of the ship, one metal talon grasping his throat and the other capturing his still-sabered wrist.
"One blaster shot and your Kenobi will be no more," Vader hisses. "I can promise that you will not be faster than me."
"Put down your weapons. He is telling the truth," Obi-Wan chokes out around the suffocating grip, torn in half by the idea that he may have made a grave mistake.
Leia, characteristically, is the last and most hesitant to untrain her blaster and the first to smart off. "What have you done, Obi-Wan?"
Instead of answering, Obi-Wan raises the one hand that isn't being held hostage and grips Vader's armored shoulder. "Anakin, release me." The words are simultaneously careful and firm.
Wordlessly, Vader complies.
With his limbs back under his control and his airway clear, Obi-Wan tiredly turns to his charges. "I have made an executive decision to fix all that I have broken."
"By inviting a mass murderer onto our get-away ship?" Leia exclaims. "Am I supposed to, what, kiss and makeup with this maniac who, need I remind you, held me hostage and attempted to torture me?"
Obi-Wan sighs. "You don't have to do anything, my dear."
"I don't really know what exactly's going on…" Han interrupts with his typical false-bravado. "But maybe we should work and talk. Y'know, since we're still balls-deep in an Imperial space station."
The next several moments are tense with a heavy silence, in no small part due to the presence of what most on the ship previously believed to be the enemy. Once the ship has safely taken off, dodging the few straggling 'troopers in the hangar as they go, Obi-Wan takes in a few steadying breaths.
"Where will we go?" Leia asks him quietly, coming to a stop next to him. "We can't trust him with the rebels, and I'm certainly not comfortable with him knowing where they are. We… we can't even trust the rebels with him, or frankly the knowledge that he's with us. We have no one to run to and nowhere to hide."
Obi-Wan smiles painfully. "I'm afraid I didn't take much time to consider how this decision might affect us."
Leia lets out a shaky breath, then quips jokingly in an effort to lighten the mood, "I thought you Jedi weren't supposed to make decisions based on emotion."
"We aren't," Obi-Wan whispers, guilt once more eating at him. "I've not been much of a Jedi for a long time."
Silence has become something of a familiarity for Obi-Wan. By now, he is accustomed to the stony loneliness that accompanies it.
"The Jedi are dead," a deep, regulated voice proffers, harsh but not necessarily unkind. "Upholding long-dead customs—"
"That you destroyed!" Leia fumes, by all rights the only person other than Sidious and Obi-Wan himself who would dare to interrupt a Sith as powerful as Vader. "Forgive me if I have no patience for you."
He lets out a throaty, humorless laugh that sounds garbled and choked through Vader's respirator. "The Jedi destroyed themselves. I only saw to it that they finished the job."
"Anakin," Obi-Wan admonishes, pained.
"I am not Anakin!" Vader bellows, and the walls of the ship creak with his intent backed by his control over the Force.
"You are speaking ill of the only family I had. I will not tolerate it."
"I WAS YOUR FAMILY!"
Obi-Wan, utterly stunned by the hypocrisy, stares wide-eyed at the mask-clad man whose destiny had, at one point, been firmly in his hands. That the very same boy of nine who had clutched at his tabards when he was scared could stand here and both deny his association with Obi-Wan and yet still demand his full attention…
"You cannot have it both ways," Obi-Wan states clearly, calm as ever but with a steely coolness he made use of most often when a young Anakin would disobey him and suffer the consequences. "You are either Anakin, who was and remains to be someone I consider family, or you are not. Sooner or later, you're going to have to make that decision."
Overtaken by his frustration, Anakin lets loose a truly terrifying shout of lurid rage. He clutches desperately at his mask as if to block out the stimuli around him. With one last resounding ker-thunk of the ship's durasteel interior walls, the pressure Obi-Wan hadn't even noticed through the dazed dismay of witnessing Vader's temper tantrum abruptly releases. Breathing is instantly effortless once more and the pounding behind his eyelids dissipates into nothing.
Somehow, before his eyes, Anakin had fought the Dark Side back with sheer force of will.