Obi-Wan Kenobi (desertexile) wrote in noexits, @ 2022-09-22 20:09:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread/narrative, marvel (tv/movies): stephen strange, star wars: obi-wan kenobi, → week 043 (everything everywhere) |
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE (BACKDATED)
None of these rumors held any truth, of course. Beneath the hood, Kenobi was still a man. A man whose heart had been burdened by the weight of too much pain. Too much suffering. A man who’d lost his faith in the Jedi philosophy. Who’d lost his commitment to a peaceful galaxy. Who’d sought refuge in the power that the Sith had to offer. A power that fed on his surging emotional instability.
“This is not a battle you can win, Jedi! Give up! Leave this system. The Republic has no power out here in wild space. These planets are under Imperial jurisdiction.” Kenobi edged closer to the fallen Jedi Master. He made no notion of recognition, although he was well aware of the identity of the man he’d nearly cut down with his saber. They hadn’t seen each other in years. More than a decade. Not since the days when Darth Kenobi had been Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Master of the highest grade. Before he’d experienced the loss which had broken him and destroyed his trust in the Jedi Council. Childhood friendships were hard to forget. Particularly one built on a shared love of adventure.
There had been more than one occasion during his training at the Jedi Academy when he thought he and Strange’s recklessness and shared refusal to follow the rules would see them turned away by every master seeking an apprentice. Or worse, expelled. Thankfully it never came to that.
And yet they both ended up on completely different paths.
Using the Force to push him away? That, to Stephen, meant that the Sith must’ve been close to defeat and needed the space to distance to regain his equilibrium. Instead of panicking, he deployed his training to quickly twist mid-fight so that instead of slamming against the rock as was the intention, his feet came into contact and he launched himself off, then did a roll on the ground before coming up in a crouching position facing his foe.
“Give up?” he replied with a small smirk and a wink. “As if! What sort of Jedi would I be if I were to give up? Oh! Wait. I’d be, you, traitor.” He slowly rose to a standing position, allowing himself some dramatic flair to twirl his lightsaber in a full circle before clutching it in preparation for another round. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize the Ataru Form taught at the Academy? You were one of us.”
This mystery surrounding this recently arisen Sith both perplexed and distressed the Council. Who was concealing his identity behind the mask? Master Yoda had his opinions, kept to himself, but they wanted actual confirmation. The last Jedi that was sent to find out did not return, and was assumed killed. Stephen was the second attempt, and he was determined to succeed…his deep seated pride would not allow him to fail. Learning that they were up against a former Jedi was one step closer to accomplishing his mission.
“Why the mystery?” he taunted, waving his hand in front of his own face to indicate his enemy’s mask. “Are you ashamed? Or do you look like a Kowakian monkey-lizard beneath there?”
Using the Force push had been a courtesy on Kenobi’s part. It was an opening for Stephen to escape. A chance for him to break away from the fight and survive to serve the Republic another day. One might even call it an unspoken kindness. Kenobi could have cut directly through Stephen’s gullet if he’d wanted. He’d been close enough. There’d been an opening. But a tiny sliver of the man he’d once been stopped him.
Unfortunately, Stephen didn’t take the bait. He didn’t leave. Instead he decided to move forward and provoke. And that left Kenobi with very few options.
“If you handled a lightsaber as well as you did your wit then you might actually be a formidable Jedi,” Kenobi replied, his voice raspy beneath the partial face covering.
And that’s when he broke away from the traditional Ataru Form that Stephen mentioned and into something more aggressive and unpredictable. But there wasn’t the same recklessness to his motions as there were with many other Sith warriors. Yes, Kenobi drew on his anger and his passions when he harnessed the Force. It equipped him with a power he’d never managed to achieve while he was a Jedi. But he still retained that Jedi poise and calm. And there was a particular care to his motions that was more akin to a dance than to an attack.
He lunged with his blade. But it was a distraction meant to lead Stephen’s focus away from that rock face, which Kenobi centered the Force upon, ripping a boulder from the wall and sending it hurtling towards his former friend.
This was the sort of attack Stephen expected from a Sith, but the sudden ferocity, combined with the intensity of his blows, was startling. The only thing he could do was raise his own lightsaber to protect himself from the oncoming barrage, the force of which nearly drove him to his knees. In this way, the ploy worked, because he did not notice the boulder coming for him until it was too late. The impact caused Stephen to crash to the ground, laying still and unconscious.
But this too was a ploy. Yes, he’d been hurt but not as badly as he pretended to be. With his lightsaber just out of reach from his empty hand, he remained very still, slowing his breathing to simulate unconsciousness, with the hope that the Sith would approach to investigate so he could spring up with a counter attack, specifically to unmask his opponent.
Succumbing to the Dark Side had not been easy for Obi-Wan. The Jedi always spoke of it as something that crept into the soul, infecting it from within. Like a virus, slowly spreading. The victim barely even conscious of the fact that it was festering some great evil. But that’s not how it had been for Obi-Wan. For Obi-Wan it had been a choice. Plain and simple. One day he realized that everything he’d been told—everything he’d been taught since infancy—was a lie. And he decided in that moment to pursue another truth. Not a more reasonable truth. He wasn’t naive. He understood the manipulative tactics of the Sith. He knew well how they tried to influence from the inside out. That wasn’t what drove him to their numbers. That wasn’t what ultimately caused him to cross the line from the side of hypocritical good to the side of so-called evil. No. It was the lies.
Had some admitted to it, perhaps he could have been persuaded to remain aligned with the Jedi. Or maybe he would have gone off and pursued another path. One less pondered. But they didn’t admit to it. They refused to announce their culpability in the death of his master. And Obi-Wan was left with no other choice than to make them suffer.
And he did.
And he did it well.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t still at the mercy of ego. He allowed himself to get too close. He gave a split second where his guard was let down.
Stephen’s ploy worked. The counter attack caused the brunt of a lightsaber hilt to bash against the side of his mask, cracking it in half. Obi-Wan ripped the rest of it from his jaw, revealing the entirety of his face for the first time.
He roared, seeing nothing but red in front of him, and swiped his blade across Stephen’s chest.
Managing to pull a fast one on a Sith was something Stephen would ordinarily gloat over, but Obi-Wan didn’t give him any time. The minute the mask was removed and his face revealed, Stephen went into a state of shock that bewildered. It never crossed his mind that Obi-Wan, his long time friend, with whom he’d gone on missions assigned by the Jedi Council, would turn to the Dark Side.
Mouth hanging open, horrified, what snapped him back to his senses was the roar. At the same time Obi-Wan swung his lightsaber, Stephen quickly rolled on the ground in the same direction, but not fast enough to catch a dark scar across his chest that smelled of his burning flesh. Hissing in pain, he fought against so he could get on his feet into a crouch, and held out his hand to summon his own lightsaber to his waiting palm just in time to block another in-coming downward strike.
There were so many questions that Stephen wanted to ask, but it came out in a hollow cry as, “Why??!”
Stephen had completed his mission… like it or not, he’d uncovered the masked Sith’s identity… now he needed to survive long enough to get this information back to the Council. And so, Stephen retreated, hoping to escape.
“You, of all people, should know why. All of the lies and the hypocrisy. The guise of helping others only to turn around and serve whichever master holds the greatest power and influence,” Obi-Wan hissed. His face burned from the brush with the lightsaber, but he was full of too much rage to feel any pain. “The Jedi lied about everything. All of their so-called truths meant nothing. It is because of them that Qui-Gon died. He gave his life for their false philosophy. For their made-up prophecy of a greater future!”
It was a moment in his life that Obi-Wan couldn’t let go. He couldn’t forget it. He would forever see the face of his former master, struck with shock when he realized that he was taken for a fool. It was a moment that tore him apart from the inside out. He would never forget. And he would never forgive.
But would he kill an old friend to forage this new path for a new master?
It seemed today wouldn’t answer that question. Strange retreated. Obi-Wan could have followed, but this was not the right time. Eventually he and Strange would face each other. They’d have their moment.
And one thing Obi-Wan hadn’t lost was his patience.