It was absolute chaos.
Death was all around- the scent of it, the mangled sound of it, and the heartbreaking sight of it.
The Captain- Rex- stood, his gun in his hand, looking out at the sight of his brothers' ends, their final shouts ringing in his ears. A piece of his soul left his body each time he saw the light leave their eyes- his eyes.
The Padawan- Ahsoka- crouched nearby, deflecting as many of the blasts as she could. Still, men fell around her and the feeling of it nearly brought her to her knees. Still, she remined beside them, resolute and gifted with the force.
The Knight- the Chosen One, Skywalker- stood just ahead of them, his arctic blue weapon whirling through the air so fast it had become a sort of orb around him instead of a line. His power was draining, he'd been fighting for countless hours, but the enemy line simply kept advancing, no matter how many droids he struck down. His hope was draining and his muscles were screaming, but there he stood.
Around him, he could see that the toll of this fight was noticeably reason enough to surrender, but he remembered the words of the High Council.
"You must not- under any circumstances- surrender this battle. The freedom of the Republic depends on your victory. We trust you will suceed."
Skywalker's lungs had long since gone numb to their burning, and the scrapes earned at the beginning of the battle had already scabbed over. He called upon the force with every once of desperation he could muster. He called upon the children of mortis to help him, to save the Republic, to save the balance.
Please...
Then, at last, the Master- Obi-Wan Kenobi, a name whispered excidedly in every creche- arrived in the line of fire, his jedi robes flowing behind him, the red blood staining them making a sort of flag- republic red.
"The General! He's arrived, He's here..." Cried the clones around him as he let his cloak fall to the ground, advancing without hesitation to the very front of the line.
It was then- when he reached the thick of the battle- that Skywalker saw him arrive, and nearly cried aloud for his relief. Obi-Wan was here, they would surely win now.
Bsshum... was the sound of Kenobi's lightsaber, the beautiful, elegant weapon of death whizzing to life in his hand. With one glance at his former apprentice and a slight nod, he leaped into the fray. Blaster bolts flew in every direction as he spun through the air, his grace matching the cadence of a dancer, his footfalls so soft that they barely left an indentation in the blood-stained soil beneath him.
Everything about Kenobi was subtle, all except his victory count. His eyes shone with the grief one could only learn in 100 lifetimes as he made his way around the battlefield, cutting down droids as if they were stalks of wheat, dismembering tanks with the ease of a youngling practicing velocities.
Skywalker looked back at his men, waving at them, telling them to follow as he trailed his Master.
He leaped through the air, landing on a SuperTank, his lightsaber slicing through its metal exterior like butter. Together as one, Skywalker and Kenobi cut through the Separatist line with a speed and fervor that would make even Count Dooku himself quiver a bit.
The thing was- after 12 years of fighting together- they'd melded into something new. They were no longer two Jedi. They were no longer even two halves of a whole. A "whole" was not the right word for what they were- it didn't quite capture the synchronicity of their blows, the way their minds worked on the same frequency and their thoughts mirrored each other's. They were like their own Universe- swift, expanding, overtaking everything it crosses; infinite.
And just when it seemed the Separatists were going to pull away, a well-aimed shot from a sniper droid hit Skywalker straight in the stomach.
Instantly, as he fell backwards through the smoke and blasterfire, his halo burst from his head like a ray of tarnished sunlight- a light so blinding and yet so dark flying in all directions.
To Kenobi, it felt like a piece of him had just exploded- his heart felt like it had burst.
Without a second thought he abandoned the tanks, fled from the droids and hurtled to Skywalker's side- his name shouted on his lips so loud the nearby clones dropped their guns and held their hands to the audioreceptors on their helmets.
"ANAKIN!"
His hands found the younger man's as he told him to breathe. Hurriedly, he pulled off his tunic's layers and found the smoking hole- three inches wide and located just to the left of his navel.
"Master..." Skywalker whispered, coughing and throwing back his head.
"Shhh... don't waste a breath, dear one. I'll fix this..." Kenobi muttered, his fingertips falling over the wound. Anakin hissed, his hand squeezing his Master's as fire spread beneath his skin.
He'd not felt pain like this in a long, long time.
"Anakin, listen to me. We've not much time," Kenobi instructed, casting a glance over his shoulder. Cody and his men had arrived, and had immediately created a strong perimeter around them. Rex kneeled nearby, his helmet discarded several meters behind him and a look of grim terror etched on his face. It looked as though he'd run here, too.
Obi-Wan turned his attention back to Anakin, whose eyes were fluttering between open and closed as sweat gathered on his brow. He spoke softly, so as not to alarm his former apprentice.
"You've got to focus on our bond."
"Our bon-?"
"Yes," Kenobi cut him off. "Don't speak, Anakin. Just do as I say, alright?"
The younger one nodded, his halo still shimmering behind his head as his breaths came in short, staggered huffs.
"Focus on our bond, follow it now. You must concentrate, I know it's difficult but you must try. I'm going to do something the Council would hate..." he muttered, closing his eyes and pulling his hand from Anakin's tight grip, placing it instead on his forehead. The other one rested over his wound.
Kenobi let his breathing fall to a meditative cadence, and he let himself be aware of the force in his body. HE abandoned the battlefield, let the sound of blasts and shouting fall away from his ears, focusing only on Anakin's heartbeat beneath his fingers. He concentrated now more than he'd ever done in his life- and that was quite the statement.
He concentrated so hard he became aware of the force in himself, inside Anakin, and inside every clone on the battlefield. He was not only aware, but connected.
The connection he had to the force in that moment would have shattered the minds of ordinary men, ordinary Jedi- but not Kenobi. He'd never known, but there was a second branch to the "Chosen One" prophecy. The man beneath his fingers was destined to balance the Galaxy, but that meant being incredibly unbalanced himself- and there was another, the one who would take his hand and guide him back to shore if he ever drifted too far in either direction.
If the Chosen One fell... descended into the dark, Kenobi would be there to pull him back to his feet.
If he rose too far into the sun, his love for Obi-Wan would be there to feed his darkness.
Kenobi was his anchor.
Only master Yoda knew this... and that was the reason he'd never made the two separate, had quieted Mace's concerns about Skywalker growing attachments. Because Kenobi was just as powerful as Anakin, in a different way. Anakin was mind-breakingly strong, but Obi-Wan was incredibly devoted.
Kenobi was the Light's favorite child. It would do as he asked, if only he should call loud enough for it to hear.
And in that moment, Kenobi was letting out a war cry.
Immediately, the Force answered.
His head fell back, and the Light poured into his mouth, sinking into his eyes until they shone like exploding stars, and leaking from his fingers.
The force rallied behind him with the power of an army you could only imagine, and when he commanded that power poured from his fingers and into its human vessel. Instantly, Anakin's eyes flew open as the pain went away, replaced with a sort of tingling lightness. The skin burned away by his wound began to grow back before his eyes.
He gasped, feeling like his skin was about to burst, and looked alarmedly at his master, ready to ask if he was seeing this, but his words died in his throat when he saw him.
Obi-Wan sat there, his hands on Anakin's forehead and stomach, his legs crossed over one another in a perfect lotus position, an unseen wind blowing his hair. He was quite the thing to see.
But, perhaps the most striking thing was the sight of his eyes. They were like suns- glowing pure golden light that made the nearby clones look away, for they were too bright. These were not the eyes of a sith, however. No, these were the eyes of the light. The force itself was seeping out from underneath it's disciples eyelashes.
Rex, who had not breathed in several minutes due to the indescribable spectacle unfolding before him, noticed now that the battle had ceased, for even the separatist battle droids had stopped at the sight of what was happening.
And when Obi-Wan pulled his hands away and turned to face them, it was impossible to miss the fact that he was furious.
Ahsoka, who'd been holding her breath in a similar way, suddenly sensed an imminent breaking point in the force and knew something was about to happen. She didn't have a clue about what was going on with Master Kenobi- how on Coruscant he'd managed to become this powerful- but it didin't matter, now was not the time for thinking about that. She immediately leap to her feet and scurried around, telling her master's men to retreat, to run... to get out of the way.
Kenobi rose silently to his feet, and threw his lightsaber aside. His molten gaze rose to meet the droids with an expressionless fury on his face that had them glancing at each other, all processing the same thing.
Should we retreat?
But the sad reality was that even if they'd retreated long ago, there would still be no time to escape.
The Rise of Kenobi had arrived, and there was nowhere they could go to escape it.
"Retreat!" Called the separatist commander, turning his SuperTank the other way and attempting to escape. He'd made it only a couple of meters before Kenobi raised his hand towards him, effortlessly stopping the tank in its tracks.
"Halt," Kenobi commanded, his voice echoing so loud it was heard a parsec away.
"You've made a grave mistake."
When he turned his attention to the sniper droid hanging from a gunship above, his jaw set.
The droids slowed their retreat, turning to look at what their processers could only explain as some sort of otherworldly god.
He tilted his head at the droid, which looked about as scared as a droid could look, and when he exhaled, light exploded from his eyes and hurtled toward the gunship, exploding it where it hovered, instant and horrifying.
The Separatists immediately began shouting in their nasal voices, hollering "Retreat! Full retreat, now!"
But Kenobi reached out, his hand taking out thirty droids with one wave, leaving them flattened on the ground like one piece of sheet metal. They were retreating in full now, and the clones of the republic nearly cried at the sight of it- their general, Kenobi defeating the entire Separatist army with merely a wave of his hand, with six resounding words.
Anakin, who'd recently risen shakily to his feet, had walked to stand behind his Master with an expression on hid face that could only be described as...
"wow..."
And when the droids had all flown off on gunships and the Separatist commanders had returned to their flagships, hyper-jumping to their home systems to stay for a long long time, Kenobi's eyes returned to their normal, sad, blue-grey magnificence.
He turned to Anakin, his hand coming to cup the younger man's cheek, and not a sound could be heard from his men, not even from the wind.
When he spoke, his words no longer echoed across the battlefield. They were soft, like the smile on his face.
"There you are."