Title: Miles To Go...
Author: MJ Lee (mj.lee@chello.se)
Rating: PG
Summary: A battle at the Death Star
Warnings: DPS fic
Category: Angst

The Death Star

As I walk through the metal monstrosity Darth Vader and the Emperor has wrought, I cannot help but remember a young boy who once cuddled up to me whenever we flew through space. How many nights did we spend wrapped in the same blanket? My arms around his shivering body. He was always cold whenever we left the planet, and fleetingly I wonder if he ever feels the chill of space *now.* Somehow I doubt it.

Finally I turn a corner and there he is. Waiting for me, as I knew he would be. He is standing silently at the end of the corridor, dark red blade, like blood taken shape, shimmering and reflecting off the black polished walls.

The black helmet he wears covers his eyes, his beautiful eyes - a memory flashes through me, of the day he married 'Dala, and how I thought then that the skies paled in comparison to their blue fire.

There is danger in remembering the past, in remembering a man who was padawan, friend and lover, and who is, as I told his son, dead. This Sith Lord, Darth Vader, would kill me without mercy or thought as easily and naturally as Ani would once have died to defend my life.

Still I cannot stop the emotions coursing through my body and soul. Grief. Regret. Anger. Love. Anakin, my Anakin, how did we ever come to this?

Not matter your accusations the last time we met, my crime, if crime it was, was to love you, not too little, but too much...

In silence we face each other as I ignite my 'saber.

How many times have we stood like this, face to face? Watching for weaknesses, assessing strengths. There was a time when I knew his every move, and our bouts were a beautiful deadly dance as the Force flowed between us and around us. I can still hear the echo of his laughter, his joy in each movement, in the pure pleasure of being alive.

There is no joy in him now, only darkness. Anakin, where did your laughter go?

He speaks in a dark harsh rasp, so different from my Anakin's beautiful lilting voice.

"You have grown weak, old man."

I smile at him, knowing what he sees. A man bent and aged before his time. My hair and beard is snow-white, my body thickened, with the joints aching each night in the chill desert night, and the skin on my hands is wrinkled and spotted. This is the price I paid, am still paying for your sins, Anakin. And I accept it gladly. For it is as much my sin as it is yours. I sinned in failing, as you sinned in falling. I wonder, of the two of us, who is the greatest sinner?

Through the remnants of the bond we still share; the bond I allow to open for the first time in so many years, I can feel his astonishment at my reaction to his taunt. There is nothing but serenity in my own voice as I reply, "You cannot win, Vader. If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

Oh, my Ani, you never truly understood, did you? You never realised what real power is. You always believed that it was something to be grasped for greedily. A great and glorious thing to be fought for and captured. Not something that came only to those who rejected it. My Master taught me that, before you were born, and there is a moment when I mourn my failure to teach you that final lesson.

* * *

Luke ran across the hangar, heart beating fast. Ben was in trouble! That strange, crazy feeling the old man had been teaching him to touch, screamed a warning he couldn't ignore.

he wasn't sure how or why, but old Ben after only a few days was closer and more connected to him than Uncle Owen or Aunt Beru, though they were the only parents he'd ever known. For as long as he could remember he had been filled with a vague, deep-seated discontent. A frustration that he was meant to be *more* than just a moisture farmer on a back-water planet. Ben had held out hope for that life and a part of him had been ashamed of his eagerness in grasping his chance.

He gasped as he watched the two figures come into sight. Ben was fighting a tall man, dressed in black armour. And he was losing! Luke watched horrified as the old man retreated until their fight was framed by the open blast doors.

Without thinking, with the recklessness that uncle Owen always said would be his death, Luke charged to the help of his friend.

Obi-Wan was desperately parrying the increasingly confident thrusts. Vader was right he thought with a flash of rueful humour, even as he began to pant, breathing heavily. He had indeed grown old and weak, all his strength sapped by the harsh sun of Tatooine and the long years spent maintaining the shield that protected Anakin's son from his father.

Hearing steps behind him, he whirled, 'saber instinctively brought up in defense, and Luke, his boots scrabbling desperately for hold on the smooth polished metal floor, could not halt his momentum, as he literally spitted himself on the slender hissing blade of pure energy.

Blue guileless eyes opened wide in a moment of stunned incomprehension, before they went blank and the boy slowly slumped to the floor.

Darth Vader flinched, falling to his knees as his mind suddenly exploded with strobe-like flashes of the young man lying dead by his feet and he *knew* who it was, who it had to be. "Nooooo....." he moaned, clutching his head, the light saber falling with a clatter to the floor.

Obi-Wan never glanced at the boy he had spent the last twenty years shielding. Instead he took one step forward and raised his 'saber once again. "I am sorry, Ani," he said softly, implacably, and then in a smooth arc, the slender blue blade cut through hair, metal and whatever was left of the human once known as Anakin Skywalker.

As the man once known as Anakin Skywalker fell, body limp in death, by accident, or perhaps fate, his outstretched fingers touched the pale skin of the son given to him in his moment of death.

Using the moment of frozen shock as every storm trooper in the room stared at the heap of black metal and cowl, the stench of charred flesh wafting from the corpse, Obi-Wan ran, using the Force to jam the blast doors as he dove for the already moving Millenium Falcon. By the time the Storm Troopers began shooting again it was already too late as the ship gained speed and shot out of the Death Star and into the blackness of space.

* * *

I can feel the chill of the metal through my robes as every breath burns like fire in my throat and sweat runs down my face. I want desperately to grieve for the man whom I once loved, no, that I still love. I want to mourn Luke, and a life ended before it began.

I feel nothing.

I think I must have lost too much, because instead of grief, all I can think, with a weary selfishness is that behind me I leave two dead men; father and son. Both my padawans. They are my legacy of failure, as a Jedi and as a man.

Perhaps if I had tears left I would cry. Perhaps if I had time I would mourn. I have neither. I have a war to fight.

I know, now, that I made terrible mistake all those years ago, when I followed Yoda's example and hid myself away while the last remnants of the old Republic scattered and fell. Bail Organa was right, I should have stayed and fought. Yet, I did believe that Luke was the future. But in this moment which should have been the end of all my hopes I realise just how wrong I was.

As I lay on the floor, panting heavily, a slender white hand is holding true hope out to me.

"General Kenobi?"

I look up and the words die in my throat as I gaze for the first time on Princess Leia Organa. She has the dark eyes of her mother and the fiercely burning spirit of her father. There is none of the innocent youth of her brother. I feel none of the fear that slashed through me when I first looked on the boy and saw the shadow of his father stamped on his face and the brilliance of his smile.

She is deceptively young and fragile. Beautiful, of course, but when I look deeper I see the spirit forged in battle, her father's power tempered with her mother's compassion. The light shining inside her. She is infinitely stronger than the callow farm boy that for so long I've pinned all my hopes on. Oh you fool, I think silently to myself.

I let her help her help me rise and stand before I smile and bow, and for the first time in too long speak the words that sound at once hauntingly familiar and foreign to my tongue. "I am Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Knight, Your Highness."

She smiles at me, and my breath catches. Yes, this is the one. Not her brother who seemed too much like his father, even to the restless, angry frustration I felt claw inside him. His sister is at peace with herself, and with the power she already possess, the power, with my teaching, she will in time wield. It neither frightens nor tempts her.

* * *

Later, as we travel through hyperspace, I stand with my hand on her shoulder. I feel the fragility of bones beneath my fingers, yet I am not deceived. She will carry the burdens I must lay on her easily and with grace.

Watching the stars slide into place as we approach the moon of Yavin, I silently resolve to spare her the truth. Let the flawed Skywalker legacy die, back on the Death Star. Leia Organa will be future and I know deep in my heart that she will not fail me or the galaxy like her father and brother did.

It is a long hard road we will travel. I do not fool myself. The Emperor is still strong, the Empire far superior in both men and weapons. Yet, for the first time since I watched the Temple burn and the Republic die, I feel hope reborn.

For I have promises to keep.

The End