CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The New Jedi Order

Aubergine sunset dyes the boundless white sky a deep, wine-dark purple, shot through with vivid streaks of red and orange. The bloated spheres of the twin suns slide away, and ion contrails sluice the horizon as starfighters pass to fight battles on other worlds, distant worlds, battles that may determine the course of the future.

Here on Tatooine, no one cares. This is a far-out-of-the-way planet, smothered in hostile deserts and scattered spaceports, forgotten by the civilized systems – what was the old Galactic Republic and is now the Empire. Aside from krayt dragons and Podracing, there is little of interest. Danger is rife. Slavery and gambling pervade heavily.

Nobody remembers that Tatooine was the home of a humble slave named Anakin Skywalker, who became the most famous – and reviled – Jedi. He was a hero, his face in every HoloNet broadcast, his exploits heavily publicized and analyzed and mulled over. He and his partner, his former Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, are – were – the ultimate Jedi, the last symbols of hope in a chaotic and polarizing war.

And thus, the news has not yet reached Tatooine that their greatest denizen, the slave that no one remembers except for the Lars family and an aging Toydarian, has fallen. The most revered Jedi has become the traitor to the Order, to the Republic, to everything he professed to love. Only a scant few know that he has become the black-cloaked, ice-hearted Darth Vader, but everyone knows that he has fallen. He is worse than evil – he has shattered the hopes of billions of beings.

There is one man on Tatooine who knows who and what Anakin Skywalker has become. This is the one man who knows the entire wretched saga of him, knows of his twin children by his secret wife, a man who knows – or thought he did – the blast furnace that Skywalker called a heart. There is one man whose own heart, despite all his discipline, is smashed to pieces.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is relieved for Tatooine's solitary position. He is relieved that no one has found his lonely hovel deep in the desolate, deserted Jundland Wastes, and profoundly grateful for the silence, even if it does make his thoughts beat an anguished tattoo on his skull. He is not sure he can bear company.

He sits with his hands spread on a rough stone table, staring down at an unappetizing meal of sand-ridden mushrooms and bread. Even the water has sand in it, but Obi-Wan does not care. What he cannot stand is this.

Mere hours ago, he delivered Luke Skywalker, Anakin's infant son, to his aunt and uncle – Anakin's stepbrother Owen Lars and his wife Beru. They are good-hearted, simple farmers, and will provide the boy with a home and a life far away from the murderous crusade of his father and his father's master.

And now – here he is. His new home is this, an abandoned two-room abode, built from sandstreaked clay and sunk half-underground. Here he is to spend his years, growing old, watching the boy, to see if the unworldly strength of Anakin's Force-talent will manifest itself in Luke.

The loss of the Jedi Order stabs and slashes Obi-Wan to pieces. As long as he endures, they are not dead, not yet, but that does not ease the pain. It wakes him from grisly nightmares. It torments him, dogging his steps worse than the wind.

Yoda is exiled on the remote, marshy planet of Dagobah – Obi-Wan has no way of knowing if he arrived safely, if he is alive. He is the last, the very last. And the rest – the pain slaps a small cry from him. Dead, all of them. Whether gunned down by turncoat clones, fallen in battle, or – oh, too much, too much – slaughtered personally by his former apprentice, the Jedi have been utterly obliterated.

Obi-Wan has tried a thousand times to will away pain and loss, to allow himself to listen to the Force. But it is dark and tormented, screaming with the memory of unspeakable anguish. He will not find any relief there.

He huddles over the table as the sunset slips into true darkness. His stomach and head ache, and his body shakes uncontrollably. He lifts the bread to his mouth, chewing mechanically. His jaw throbs. He stares out the small window, as the shards of his heart are methodically crushed, once more, in the remembering.

Anakin, Anakin. First an inquisitive, bright, shrewd young boy, tousle-haired and blue-eyed, so proud to wear the Padawan braid as he stood beside his new Master. So eager to learn, so desperate to learn, to soak up anything and everything, whether it was the details of Corellian shipyards or the forms of lightsaber combat. Defiant, yes, but that was to be expected, at his age.

Anakin, growing older, so proud, so frantic to show him what he had learned, dying to please. He defied Obi-Wan's orders constantly, making hash of any regulation that cared to challenge him. He prevailed through stunning skill, sheer audacity, and a combination of brashness, intuition, and lucky guesswork.

Anakin, nineteen, meeting again the woman he had decided to marry when he was nine. Obi-Wan's efforts to uproot this weed of attachment went for nothing. Anakin came to "rescue" him in the Geonosian arena, and then – there was the first glimpse of the horror he was to become, as he charged Count Dooku in pride and fury and paid dearly for it. This was when the black, uncontrollable rage first manifested. The first that Obi-Wan knew of it, at any rate.

The day Anakin had become a Jedi Knight was the proudest of Obi-Wan's life. Exhausted, beaten and bloody from the trials, his lightsaber still clenched in his mechanical hand, Anakin had stood straight, a stunning smile lighting his face. Those were the days when the hero in him was plainly obvious, and nothing of the villain.

Anakin, his gaze as blue and unsettling as ever, had looked straight into Obi-Wan's eyes as the older Jedi gently cut his Padawan braid, laid the soft sliver of hair in his hand. "Anakin, I am very proud of you," Obi-Wan had whispered in his ear, and Anakin turned that dazzling, dazing smile on his new partner, no longer Master.

And partners they had been, two halves of the same warrior, mind, being, spirit. Obi-Wan could not imagine life without Anakin there to complement him.

And for all he loved me, he lied to me just as well. Anakin had never seen fit to inform Obi-Wan of the true nature of his relationships with Padmé Amidala and Supreme Chancellor Palpatine – a mistake that had cost them both the Jedi and the Republic. Anakin had offered half-truths and vague excuses, never honesty.

Obi-Wan was what some called the archetypal Jedi. He was an astounding lightsaber combatant who preferred to talk things out. He was an almost-unmatched starfighter pilot who hated to fly. His sense of fairness and justice was renowned even by the Masters, who had recognized him for his accomplishments by offering him a seat on the Jedi Council. And Obi-Wan had never manipulated, shadowed, or twisted the truth, or the Force, even a fraction as much as Anakin had. Before his fall.

He had never desired a different life. He had never imagined one. The Jedi were his family, the Force – almost – his only love. Anakin had never been that way, and in the end, the cracks in this brilliant, fatally flawed Jedi had destroyed him. But not before he took the rest of the Order with him.

Obi-Wan hunches over, drawing short, sharp breaths. It is too cruel. It has to be a dream. Mace, Saesee, Agen – even, so long ago, his own Master Qui-Gon – all victims of the Sith. A thousand times, he has been told that love, peace, justice will win out over anger, fear, hatred. And each time the Jedi have been wrong has been written in their own blood.

Anakin. Anakin. Oh, Anakin, how could you do this? Obi-Wan pushes the plate away. You were the Chosen One. When the moment came, if you had been strong enough to kill Palpatine...how much pain could you have spared us? But you were seduced by the lies and false promises, and now... Obi-Wan can't bear to keep thinking, can't see a way to stop. Oh, my Anakin. My son, my Padawan, my friend, my brother, my other half... Why? Why?

Obi-Wan stares into the dusk, trying to control his breathing, refusing to let his cracked veneer shatter completely. But it is too late. It is too late for everything.

After a long pause, he stands up and pads softly down the steps in the back, down a grainy tunnel and out into the plateau behind the hovel. A triad of sandstone fists shield it from the worst of the sand and wind, and the sunset is just deepening to true night. The thin, trembling moon perches on the horizon.

Here, there is a hot pool, smelling of sulfur, deep enough that his toes barely scrape the bottom. He wonders how hot it has to be to burn away thoughts, instill silence and calm. He wonders if it will ever be.

In silence, Obi-Wan sheds his robes and slips in. He lies there, raw and hurting, open to the sky, the universe, the world, watching the stars wheel overhead with eyes that ache from holding back tears. He cannot, will not, cry. He has to obey the path, keep true to the Jedi even when he is the Jedi.

The one time I dared disobey was the time I should have listened. The one time I tried to turn against it... no matter the pain, I should have let Anakin go.

It is no use imagining what should have and might have and could have been. A Jedi does not dwell on the past. A Jedi detaches himself from emotion, from attachment and envy and the pure anguish that always comes with it.

Obi-Wan briefly wonders why his face is wet when he has not yet slipped his head beneath the hot, mephitic water. Steam rises off his body, pale and ghostly, and when he lets himself, finally, slowly relax, it punches a breathless sob out of him.

Obi-Wan is overwhelmed by the cruelty, lost with loneliness, beset with despair and second-guessing. Slumped against the edge, steaming and gasping, he realizes at last that there is no tranquility, and perhaps there never will be, for a horror as great as the murder of the entire Order.

He bends over, staring at his moonlit reflection on the water. He scarcely knows this old, exhausted man, with deep streaks of silver in his auburn beard and hair. A second sob forces its way out of his mouth. He tastes salt and sulfur, tears and betrayal. His eyes sting, his shoulders heave.

If anybody hears the great Obi-Wan Kenobi crying his heart out, they will think it is only the wind, scraping through empty stone beneath the endless sky, here in a world of sand, sorrow, and shattered dreams. They will not see the man, drifting and drowning, choking on the hot water, circling slowly, circling until he goes under.

Far away, in another plain homestead, a baby cries.

Beru Lars shrugs into a robe and scurries through the quiet, whitewashed corridors to the small room now serving as Luke Skywalker's nursery. The newborn is bawling piteously, so she scoops him into her arms, cooing.

Luke snuffles, then lays his head trustingly on her shoulder. Beru kisses his soft, ashy-blonde hair, rocking him. He calms as she walks him back and forth across the room.

Beru knows only that he is a waif, parents indisposed or dead, a little boy who needs a good home, and she is as close to a mother as he will ever have. She does not know of his promise, his peril, and the fact that the hopes of the Jedi Order now rest with this one small boy, sucking his thumb, his cries slowly abating.

Beru stands there until Luke has gone to sleep again. From down the hall, her husband Owen calls out sleepily, so she kisses the baby's forehead, lays him down, and walks back. She crawls beneath the covers with Owen, and lets the knowledge that she is loved and wanted warm her in the chill darkness of Tatooine midnight.

Far, far, far away, across stars and systems, on a blue-green planet of snowy mountains and glimmering seas, a baby girl cries in a plush nursery. A bevy of adoring nurses rush to her, make her smile, carry her around, offer her toys and bottles and kisses until she is quiet. She has dark eyes, a soft fuzz of dark hair, fair skin, and her name is Leia Organa, the Skywalker dropped from it for her own safety.

Her father, a man who harbors his own sorrows but loves his new daughter intensely, appears in the nursery doorway, and the nurses hand Leia to him. Her whimpers turn to contented gurgles, and she nuzzles against him. Bail Organa, cuddling her to his chest, sits on the windowsill as, outside, the Alderaanian sunset bleeds flickering color. And then, as it fades, night falls.