birthday post! ily everyone!
―
There was always something so beautiful in tears that laid unsung, of a strident legacy forever unfound. Like golds and tyrannical blues. Like the sirens of a heavy ocean shore. An autumn's breath crept up his skin. Eternal sleep disguised as a craving; his stomach was growling but hope faded. Time voided in favor of stillness; a lake remaining a mystery, overcooked with sophistication, yet nurturing ivy mold. (Of course, in describing that, it is he who nurtured ivy mold, craving praise that his own voice couldn't provide.) Hair dusted with shaky copper; a face tilted forty-five towards a window where the sun had long gone, and apricot had transpired into heavy breaths as the Jedi tried not to disintegrate.
"Do you even realize how much damage your death caused? General? Are you even looking at me? Listening? Did you think about all our men? We were on a mission. A kriffing mission... Some of our men took their lives. Because you were gone, because they couldn't bear the thought of serving under another General. Those men died because of you. Their blood is on your hands."
His knees had long since buckled, a gnawing nothing that contrasted flawlessly against shields soaring in the hells. Low piano keys. Feeling like too much, his body begging for collapse yet a mind who refused tirelessly. He was a building with no infrastructure, waiting for an earthquake that would never come. His apologies to others a mute scream like black coffee – bitter. Blood was on his hands, of his men – the burgundy like rabbits running into drawling mopes.
He was covered in dust and boiled with salt.
"Citizens of Naboo looked up to you, Obi-Wan, some worshipped you as a hero that saved the planet. Including me... And you went and died. Do you know how many people got drunk that day? Mourning you, their saviour? You were a national hero! Then, some decided to do stupid, reckless things, and innocent people lost their lives. Our services were completely overwhelmed." She paused for a moment, pain and anger like twins, their names aught to be written down, grief and guilt in his eyes, "Obi-Wan. You will get forgiveness eventually. But please, I... Naboo needs time."
He didn't want to feel this way. (Or maybe he didn't deserve to.) Wrongness was a virtue, a religion where ordinary would say 'praise be!', yet its values were wrong. The lives of innocents were tainted against sienna hands, blisters of the mission like a scattered grave of the friendship he had lost. Ash was lined in the wrinkles of deprived irises, magic chattering in his fingers though saddened by a redoubtable guilt.
Loved coursed through his fingers yet he a man deaf, drowning in a chorus multiplied, every life a change that decorated the theme in melancholic mauve. Weaves of numbness in the folds of his arms. They echoed onto his face.
"Just... Just, go away, Master. I can't even look at you, because every time I hear your voice, I see your body, lifeless in an alley as I held you, tears in my eyes, everything. I think... I ask that you give me some space. At least until the next mission, then we'll see where things go." Ahsoka's words were okay though. She was young, and she was hurting. Perhaps if he said that enough time, he'd believe it. She was young. She was young.
Or perhaps it was his face that drowned, and he who echoed numbness.
He couldn't even contact Satine. Nor Quin, or Dex, and by the time he got to Bail, Obi-Wan figured the good Senator was too busy anyway.
His tunics were creamed like pavlova, stained with a child rolling in grassy plains, tattered and scroungy, and palely loose. That child would run back to his Mother – who would scold the poor boy, for his silly mistakes left his clothes dirty. Obi-Wan was no child, and his mistakes left residue on his palms. The expression on his face was as flat as water, his little tells of sadness prominent against a stubble that once held a beard with the same amount of pride as a father holding his son. His head melted into his hands as quiet sobs finally came, a solitude of weeps against youthful stars.
Bant might've understood, once upon a time. (After-all, she understood during Melida/Daan. Well. She listened.)
Bant was dead.
He didn't deserve to cry, either. He didn't deserve to be sobbing over something that he caused, a society where he was the criminal and logic had sentenced him to life without parole. He... he... they would never forgive him. He wished someone would because he, himself, certainly wouldn't.
But it was Anakin who hurt beyond what words could've expressed – although he had no desires to express his emotions anyway. "Look, Obi-Wan... Do you think I would do this? If our positions were swapped, and I was the one coaxed into faking my karking death... It doesn't matter how much you were outvoted, or whatever kriffing excuse you've come to give me, if your Master could get me accepted into the order, then mine could say no to a mission for once in his goddamned life-
Are you a fucking robot, or do you not get the message? Leave me alone, Obi-Wan. I don't want to talk to you and hear you're sorry."
A mercury silver, hallucinations concerning but still welcomed. Sugary, brown hair blended into features at peace; dark hands as beautiful as they were in the chasm of his younger memories. Soft lips cherry with dysphoria, a gentle smile translating into the Force as pure. Entirely balanced, one with the Force, as one was always rumored to be after passing.
She had passed – a long, long time ago. (A time where upon seeing a chasm, he would've yelled as loudly as possible, and giggled at the bounces as his voice fainted. Now, he would equip his lightsaber and deflect a bullet.)
When she walked towards him, her taupe tunics were nourished with blessings and comfort. Instead of speaking, she kneeled in-front of the figure broken against a wall, like a puppet without strings. Moments past in silence, a broody quiet filled with baskets of dandelion twisted into bleeding Force signatures. Harmonies echoed in the streaks on his face. Obi-Wan shook his head, becoming an inhumane wretch. He was like a martyr who still lived, a grenade unexploded in his eyes, like...
Like a Jedi who still lived...
He couldn't deny the words of others, not before, and not now. If they said blood was on his hands, then blood was on his hands.
"There was nothing you could've done." Her voice was warm, like a hot air-balloon in a twilight's sky, lined with cusps of fireflies and illuminated with joys of curling tree-trunks. One of her fingers stroked his hand, like a mother talking to a son, murmurs of tenderness. It didn't make him feel much better.
A sad-shrugged smile came from Obi-Wan. "Always straight to the point, Master Tahl." His words were whipped into a whirl storm, thunder frowning and lightning reduced to a coy frown. (He who controlled the lightning should let the lightning reign free, and instead the bolts huddled around him with crying screams, begging to be cursed upon a land.) Obi-Wan's grief was unjust, his guilt opprobrious, mean, a people's rioting in his feelings, he merely numb. Only the sounds of his breathing could be heard for a moment. "There was everything I could've done." His statement was true. He could've done everything... always everything...
The blood was on his hands...
"This isn't just about the mission anymore, is it?" Master Tahl asked.
In the darkness of his quarters, Obi-Wan crumbled. Vulnerable, evermore the tiny youngling who dreamt of a lightsaber, who went up to near-strangers and begged for a chance. Auburn rumples like clouds showcased rain, like the eye of a hurricane, as the stars and the Force, and molten-tipped feelings merged. They created the imperfections of a man who couldn't... who couldn't say no to a mission, who couldn't save his Master, who couldn't stop the water when a chance was fathomable, in his eyesight- maybe even likely...
He refused to waste words expressing himself to a ghost. Choked noises came from ethereal irises, blue as the day's pass, like water off the Southern coast, filtered with ash as a mind thought of burdens the stars didn't want him to carry. An inner angel pleaded for his unearthly brain to speak, for its calm was more disturbing then hysteria. He couldn't look at Master Tahl anymore, to see forgiveness where anger should've shrouded. (After-all, he was the reason her lover was dead.)
Master Tahl held his aching shoulders as tears lost the fight, removed from the battle, drained the man in the process. In its stead, quaking half-breathes and shattering gasps for air, like a toddler overcoming a tantrum. Yolky blurs in his eyes made Tahl look like a goddess, glimmering understanding through her. Upon a blink, he saw burgundy stained onto her eyes like the tears on his. (The exact shade on his hands, too.)
Obi-Wan was once a porcelain dish on a shelf, now the shelf was broken and he in pieces on floorboards. A disgusting creature, who shamed his friends, who played on their emotions like fiddles on a violin, made them believe he was dead, let everyone he cared for die – Tahl... Qui-Gon... the Clones... everyone. For those who were left, it was only a matter of time. He was always going to end up alone.
"I... I don't know where to start, Tahl, I've ruined everything." Obi-Wan's word were a scimitar of ice stabbing through his throat. His fingers twitched, wishing upon a meteor for the past, anything to distract himself from these feelings that were so wrong (because he had caused them himself). Sakura blossoms were a dulcet scent, tea leaves of his room – Sapir – once comforting now like foreign credits. Moonlit lines colored his face in hues of onyx and white, night.
Tahl didn't have to think about her response, eyes lined with knowledge, silky and milky and oh-so-beautiful, how could he have let those fall? "I once had a cup... little, and blue, like chirpy sapphires, it was delicate – Qui-Gon loved it. It was forged in Aurea, remade from shattered remains of other teacups. You see? They take the pieces of something beautiful and create something even more beautiful. Once it had been broken, it became valuable." Tahl smiled at the sparkle in Obi-Wan's eyes, the thoughts churning like leaping waves, and she was about to send a tsunami. "I told Qui-Gon the same story... after Melida/Daan, before he took you on again."
Corrupted by phantoms of himself, Obi-Wan again shook his head. "It's not the same. He didn't fake his death, only relying on his friend's emotions to tell his tale."
(Unseen knives scowled his back like poison, the rituals of his mourners leaving scars, leaving trails of blood that lifted upwards towards his mind, incriminating his hands in its walk, souring logic into a grief-guilt hybrid he still believed he wasn't worthy of.)
"But he did leave a thirteen-year-old to war, left him with an impossible choice."
Obi-Wan glared at her. "It's not the same." Ghouls, an empty ghost of Qui-Gon frowning, carrying the tears Obi-Wan wished he could produce. White, bright lights of hazy age crystallized into lowering drops. It would never be the same, not when...
"...Those men died because of you."
"Would you have left Ahsoka at thirteen to war?" Tahl paused for a minute, her words sinking into the ocean of a flooding Jedi Master's quarters, in the dead-willing night. Her wisdom was the wailing, wooden ship. "You both made mistakes, and a teacup shattered. He remade the pieces... what will you do?"
Because of him. Death. Gruelling groans of a man who died with a face-full of mud, grime in his eyebrows, his brothers in his eyes – screams muddled into blood-tainted carnage. In his soul, he knew, those men would've let their dreams flourish like illicit icebergs, a hymn of paints with magnificent colors, a soul painted fuchsia with empathy in their music. Those men, vode, their dreams died because of him.
"Some teacups can't be fixed." He said quietly. Obi-Wan's mind, however, still brooded on the concept. A teacup... a small pitter in the ocean's patter, the galaxy like a vast rocking horse all captured in the rhythm of his beating heart. Red was like cut tomatoes on his face. An uncomfortable warmth lingered in his stomach, the same feeling as speaking in-front of the class when he was tiny. Contemplating white noise in his ears. Failures lapsed in the waves of rugged wrists, worn wrinkles echoing in creases on his cheeks. Sighs in his expressions: but none of that mattered. Not even the stars looked down on him, for he was a waste and he had failed beyond the repair of a teacup.
Tahl was silent. "Perhaps, but how do you know if you do not try?"
"I knew the mission was going to ruin everything, yet I did it anyway." He quipped back, the remnants of a forgotten negotiator in his tongue (his only talent was teaching Senators how to care for people outside of their own), forevermore getting his way. "I don't think you understand. I knew it would fail, and I still did it. I still took my life."
Despite the harsh words of the Jedi, like bitter lemonade, Tahl didn't flinch. "And in Aurea, did they stop all production of teacups because one was dropped?"
And to a Jedi, being responsible for a life lost was worse than death, or any fate they may succumb too. To be responsible is to sign a life of misery, where others say it was in self-defence, even though you alone carry the rushing, evolving feelings as you committed violence.
"Just... just stop, Tahl. You aren't here, and it isn't going to be fixed. Numerous back-and-forths about a teacup isn't going to fix anything."
Obi-Wan's face was warm with the silk of careful tendrils, delicacy graced into sluggish movements, as he shuddered down onto the floor, lying down against her sitting leg. Tahl caressed his cheek softly, humming Jedi lullabies, low notes of an olden age where Knights didn't have to lie for missions, and comfort could be found in melodic, shape-shifting leaves in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. (Once, that was his favourite space. Now it was bleeding with the memories of hundreds who all released themselves, with war and violence and everything he fought to stop.)
Obi-Wan had the blood of vode and civilians stained onto his hands. The red was vivid, like ink splashed onto paper, muddled, angry reds that dictated the universe, a perfect crime in cursive. Liquidated success cost only of that which would shatter anything.
Thinking was torture. It brought pain. Wispy drifts of nightmares, a cloud of obsidian tainted with italic fury. "I... I'm sorry. Tahl. It was uncalled for." He said, although he could barely remember why he was apologizing.
She placed her chocolate braid in his stained hand, and he gazed wearily as brown became a muddy, mucky maroon, like the shade of vomit, vile and repulsing, his fault, his burden yet she was the only one willing to carry it with him. (Guilt, despair, sadness, disgust, everything... and he caused it all. His fault. He didn't deserve to feel any of it. Feeling is for the victim, and he was the monster.)
"Let go of your burdens, Obi-Wan. Let me drain the red." She murmured softly, her words like a spider's silk, her love like warm air and sugary hourglass-sand, timeless, divine truths. The red, like an overplayed jukebox, the red, ugly and deforming, so much red, and he couldn't share it.
Obi-Wan's mind was a sensitive ton of bricks, rigid with dangling cliffs and waterfalls, of slate so grey it echoed the numbness he felt, the emptiness he grieved, the friendship that was held hostage (where he the poor man who couldn't pay), a script where he the man not invited to a funeral. Except the funeral was his own, and his umbrella the mountain on his shoulders which Tahl now shared.
"Share it all with me, Obi-Wan, I will release it into the Force." She urged, and he opened. It felt like jubilant falling, never romanticized, like seeing fog instead of clouds, like hearing a song so beautiful whilst in eternal slumber. His feelings were muddled, ricochets between churning quotes, plants in the early morning wilting to grey ends, his internal flame waxed – emptiness. Being empty can be beautiful if one finds the right words – yet there was nothing beautiful in the moment.
(In similar fashion, a flower is only beautiful after it has blossomed; how often does a person hear the screams of terror as color is pushed out of lime threads? Obi-Wan had heard a flower blossom. Screaming and emptiness, a longing for it to be over but somehow longing for the life it was.)
Every user in the Force had a song. Like whispering chimes, or a loved one's hug, or the crisp of skipping water, the hum of trees and the comfort of hot cocoa besides a crackling fire, a dimming red. Hymns of one's heart, intentions, and purity, like looking at the back of one's head. And Tahl's was a violin, echoing the stars of Coruscant, the voice of millions, kindness in her actions, selflessness, an inspiration; an idol to a mother's son. She held Obi-Wan's crying song, the sounds of screeching traffic and atrocities, red, and weaved it into her's, allowing texture and beautifying the two into one.
Yet the consequences of an action were making Tahl fade. Dark skin was turning misty, her love to light, her eyes turning opaque. Jedi were always taught the way of compassion, but reality isn't theory, and it was never easy. "Tahl, please, stop. I-I... Stop taking my pain!" He bellowed, pleading, rain in high-pitches, beautiful harps, so tragic. His Master was dead, and Qui-Gon's lover had come back for one last lesson, only to the twist into plastic and sleep in endless ruins, because of him. "Please, Tahl! I'm sorry, just stop. Don't do this. Let me handle my emotion, stop accessing the Force!"
Was this how they felt... when he died? He supposed so. But all his tears were shed and what was left remained on his hands. Perfect handcuffs, a prison with the key at the bottom of a valley, his mind losing, his soul tainted, his hands echoing taints, everything, everyone red. Red as the color he saw whenever he was meant to see nothing. Red as blood.
"It's okay. I wanted it this way. I'm proud of you, Obi-Wan. Qui is too, up there," she said softly, whispers in the traces of a dying allure, plastic in her lungs, stars in her irises, love in her, "he's... so proud." Mahogany brown hair, a braid infected red, like cyber-truck viruses, a woman already a ghost becoming a phantom, an explosion of sobriety; he was causing this.
She was dying because of his emotions. How could anyone be proud of that?
Tahl was almost invisible, like hot breath on a frigid day, a holiday's spectacle, so, so thin and pale, giving up – and she still had enough strength to speak again. "Please, Obi-Wan, you... you do not have to feel this way forever. You... you are worthy of help."
Maybe he was worthy of help. Maybe Tahl was right. But there were always people who were more worthy. If there was too much red stained onto his hands, then he couldn't see when more was added – lives were depending on him, and trivial things such as his emotions were not going to be the cause of redder hands.
There was already too much red. Every stain was too much.
Then, she was gone. Sudden, as though she was never there at all. Gone with the thoughts that remained, them a victor in champagne-doused rooms, glittering chandeliers and caked celebrations, butter-cream frosted moustaches, pure joy blinded the sorrow emotions it was were written on, ignoring the paper. She wasn't proud of him though – she couldn't be.
She was gone. Gone with the currents of happiness, into a land of sight-seeing, in a hot air-balloon, into a mighty sky with a peaceful, twilight blue, into colors Obi-Wan couldn't comprehend, nor deserved to. Copper was in his eyes, but at least he could pretend she was safe. Maybe the red would ease, if only he could deny it, say it wasn't his fault and that her secondary death (oh gods, what a concept!) was a clock's golden chimes of time. Tick. Tock. It almost worked.
There was too much red on his hands, it was a disease, and now the red was in his eyes.
"Obi-Wan?" A voice called, and he looked down, because looking up would mean spreading the red. He would spare the innocent from everything, even the red. No one deserved the red... and he would place this burden on his shoulders, just like everything else. Just like all the reports, and the organizing, and the training, and... his vode. ("No!" A part of him cried, "The vode isn't a burden!" But he carried them, and he felt their deaths, and he was ashamed because the names were so heavy, and he was crumbling... always.)
Except the burden was too heavy – his breathing was raspy, his mind overloaded, he couldn't stomach the red. It was on his hands, and his eyes, and now... now it was everywhere. It was worse than fire beetles, it felt like a moon was smashing a sun and he between the two. The lives of others were already smoking corpses, their blood here, and it was his fault. It was all his fault. It was everything. Everything was his fault. He could've stopped everything if hadn't shown mercy, if he had been fast enough, if he had said no to the stupid mission-
Clammy tears that burnt against red skin, he a martian and those around him unvaccinated to his diseases, choked screams because Tahl was faded because of him. Happy ever after a dream he couldn't touch, pointed fingertips. Slow dancing, a smile. Slow breathing, a singular color in his once-silver teeth. Someone brushed his hair back into his face, a gruelling detail that meant the universe, because it was vulgar, rich love, he didn't deserve...
"Obi-Wan!"
―
a/n.
so yessss i'm posting this the night before my birthday :)) wooooooo
anyways goodnight everyone!!
(also are u guys proud its only 10:30 and im sleeping)