Obi-Wan Kenobi was supposed to go to Mustafar and kill Anakin Skywalker.
That was his last mission given to him by Master Yoda and, on any other day, he would have obeyed. It would have fundamentally broken Obi-Wan, but he would have obeyed and trusted in the will of the Force.
But not today.
It was easy enough to sneak into the Senate building and to take out one of the Red Guards that were assigned to protect the Chancellor.
No. The Emperor.
It was also ridiculously easy to cloak himself in the Force, to let the faintest swirl of his own negative emotions block out the steady radiance that was his own presence. He simply hid in plain sight, just another angry soul in a building drowning in fury and hate. The whole building now reeked of the Dark Side, of the Sith, and the desperation of one young man trying to save his world from annihilation.
Later, Obi-Wan told himself, later he would try to untangle what he felt as he followed after the Red Guard.
He could sense the fight between Yoda and Palpatine and every Jedi instinct within him screamed at him to drop the charade and storm into the Senate Chamber and join the diminutive master in the fight.
But he didn’t.
He couldn’t.
Obi-Wan Kenobi was not there to fight a Sith Lord.
He was there to murder Sheev Palpatine, the man who had single-handedly destroyed everything that had ever been good in Obi-Wan’s life.
After that, he was going to Mandalore to pick up Ahsoka and whoever else he could find. The Jedi would not die out while he was alive. They would find a way.
They had to.
Obi-Wan and his fellow Red Guards stood in silence as he watched the battle in the Force, as the Light slowly fell back before the Darkness. He could almost see it, dripping little rivulets of pitch and death, leaking through the ceiling, sliding down the walls like a toxic rain. His skin crawled and he saw ghosts, tormented spirits of his brother and sister Jedi forever trapped in this temple to failure. They screamed and died, over and over, howling in betrayal.
But he closed his eyes, took a breath, and stayed his course.
The Jedi might perish tonight but so would the Sith.
He knew Yoda had lost when the Senate Building wailed out in the Force, as the Light itself screamed and clawed as the Darkness tried to devour it whole. For a moment the lights flickered, the ground trembled and the fearless Red Guards shivered in their posts. They looked at each other with brief heartbeats of doubt and fear before they recovered and returned to stand at attention.
Obi-Wan did not move.
His trap was set.
The Dark Side spilled down walls and hallways, an orgy of despair, fury, and triumph. It overwhelmed civilians, who started shivering and coughing, desperate to get some air back into their lungs, unaware of what had just taken place. Of what they had all just lost.
The call for protection went out and Obi-Wan followed, moving silently after the guard in front of him, the whole lot of them blind to a traitor in their midst.
They ran at the crest of the wave of the Dark Side which thundered victoriously in his ear, demanding his surrender, his defeat, and his supplication to the great might of hatred and despair. The Red Guards moved as one, coming to the Emperor’s side and for a moment he was blinded by the shadows.
To look at Palpatine was to stare into the void, the heart of evil and all that was wrong in the Universe. Palpatine wasn’t so much a man as he was an animated corpse, the white folds of his skin waxy and putrid and clinging to bones too small for his bulk. To the Light, he was decaying where he stood, a cancerous blight swallowed up by the Darkness: a slimy, infested rotting thing with malformed tendrils and crawling legs and teeth when there should only be an old man.
Obi-Wan wanted to throw up but he couldn’t.
Not when he was this close.
“Master Yoda attempted to assassinate me!” the Emperor seemed to cackle with unbridled glee. “Find the green traitor and arrest him.”
Obi-Wan’s cadre of guards hurried off into the Senate Building, scouring the oily darkness for the Grand Master. He had already sensed that Yoda was gone, his dull spark of life already beyond the edges of Obi-Wan’s muted senses. They searched the building from top to bottom and spent nearly two hours questioning anyone who was in the area. No one could remember seeing Yoda.
In a way, Obi-Wan was glad.
If anyone deserved the right to kill Palpatine it was him.
They reported back to the Emperor that there was no sign of Yoda, that the Jedi had escaped.
The Emperor frowned and turned to a small blue figure standing in the halo of a long distance holocom.
“Have the Separatist leaders been dealt with, Lord Vader?” The Sith Lord ask his apprentice and Obi-Wan’s heart cracked.
A man with Anakin’s voice and Anakin’s posture replied. “Yes, my Master. I await further orders.”
“Remain where you are,” Darth Sidious answered. “I have no doubt Obi-Wan Kenobi is on his way to foolishly attempt to kill you. He will be no match for you, of course.”
“I look forward to putting an end to that old man once and for all, Master.”
It was a wonder that Palpatine could not hear the sound of Obi-Wan’s heart shattering into a million pieces, scattering across the cosmos like dust thrown out by a collapsing star.
“You have done well, my apprentice,” Darth Sidious smiled with rotten teeth, spewing hatred with each syllable. “Report back to me when you have killed Kenobi. Then you will be strong enough to save your beloved Padme.”
It occurred to Obi-Wan that when he had last seen Padme, she and the babies were in perfect health.
He wondered what Sidious had done to convince Anakin she was on death’s door.
But no matter. There were other reports to listen to, reports of captured Jedi, of his fallen comrades and systems rising up in revolt against this so-called Galactic Empire and of Separatist space roiling in confusion at the loss of their leaders. Luminara Unduli was captured on Kashyyyk and Deepa Bilaba was reported dead. Others as well.
Ki-Adi-Mundi, Aayla Secura, Plo Koon and Stass Allie.
All dead.
All screaming for vengeance.
No, Obi-Wan told himself as the Sith Lord festered in hideous delight.
Only the Dark Side craves vengeance.
There was a chime and the Emperor pushed himself back from his desk and the other Red Guards moved toward the door.
The Emperor passed in front of him and another guard as the four preceded them.
Now! The Light begged. Strike!
Time slowed as Obi-Wan broke ranks and raised a hand to close the door and bring down the blast doors.
One heartbeat.
For a brief moment, the Sith Lord was puzzled and the Darkness seems to laugh at the novelty of it all. How diverting to be surprised at the pinnacle of power and knowledge!
Two heartbeats.
The force pike whistled through the air as Obi-Wan spun toward the Emperor.
Three heartbeats.
The left guard opened his mouth and a strangled noise greeted the Emperor as the Darkness let out a scream of warning.
The Light! The Light! Its chosen warrior is here! He cloaked himself in rage and sorrow, wearing the blood and bones of his enemies!
Four heartbeats.
A gasp of shock and horror escaped Palpatine as the blade cut into his flesh, crushed through a rib, and embedded itself just below his heart.
Air whistled out of his punctured lung and the monster collapsed.
Five heartbeats.
The other guard moved to stop Obi-Wan, who flung him across the room like so much trash.
Six heartbeats.
That was all it took.
One man with a candle for a soul, hiding in the shadows until it was time to ignite the chaos of a new galaxy.
Palpatine gasped and wheezed on the floor, reaching out with the Darkness for his saber, hidden in his desk. Obi-Wan spun as it flew to the old man, ignited and crimson. The Sith Lord tried to struggle up right, to bring his blade up in a defensive stance. He failed.
Obi-Wan sneered and used the Force to drive the bladed pike deeper into the heart of the monster who had chased his shadows his whole life.
He ripped the blood-colored helmet and cloak off, throwing the latter aside to land on the Emperor’s desk and fall halfway to the floor like blood set free from an artery.
Like the growing stain of ichor on the floor where Palpatine lay.
Obi-Wan Kenobi stood triumphant over Darth Sidious.
The Last Jedi Knight looked down at the face of the Last Sith Lord.
“No! You… huaghf… this c-cannot b-be! Traitor! M-murderer!” Palpatine moaned, blood trickling past his pale, distorted fleshy lips. He struggled to pull at the spear, to call the Darkness to him. “Jedi scum! Help me! Won’t someone help me?”
There was pounding on the blast door and Obi-Wan turned his attention to the Red Guards outside. Four spirits raged against the door and then flew backwards, crashing into the walls and each other, scattered like autumn leaves before the throne of power.
The Light Side rejoiced and coiled around its chosen son, the one who stayed true.
The one who never wavered.
The Chosen One of the Light.
Obi-Wan whispered something as he drew out his saber and Sidious struggled to hear it, struggled to hear anything beyond the blistering rage that was enveloping him. If he hadn’t dueled with the Jedi hit squad. If he hadn’t just finished fighting with Yoda, if the Darkness wasn’t swirling around Kenobi and searching for purchase in that searingly pure soul he might have stood a chance.
“You can’t kill me!” Sidious wheezed, his legs failing him as the pike sunk deeper into his flesh. “It will only convince the Galaxy of your treachery when the legendary General Kenobi assassinates the new Emperor!”
Obi-Wan looked down at him, his eyes glowing blue in the light thrown off by his blade. “Do you think I care, Sith Lord? Do you think I care about what history says about Obi-Wan Kenobi? About the lives he saved and the people he didn’t?”
Sidious said nothing, trying to summon the strength to lash out with the Force, his rage and fury distilled down to white-hot lighting. He was biding for time but choking to death on the blood gurgling in his throat.
Obi-Wan bowed his head and murmured something Palpatine couldn’t make out, but it did not matter. The Dark Side returned to him, defeated in its attempt to poison Obi-Wan, and he lashed out with a guttural scream.
The lighting flashed around the room and scorched the electronics, fried the door and the ventilation systems.
It died on Obi-Wan’s blade and Sidious collapsed backwards, groaning in agony as his movements jarred the tip of the blade closer and closer to his heart and spine.
“I c-cannot d-die like thisss…” Sidious gurgled in pain. “I am… S-Sith! M-my apprentice will avenge me!”
“Will he?” Obi-Wan asked, his chest empty where his heart should be, a hollow, sucking wound he knew would never heal. “Knowing him… I suppose he will. But he won’t be a Sith. Not a true one. You’ve had no time to train him, to warp his soul and break his spirit. No, my dear Darth Sidious. I’m afraid the Sith die here with you.”
And the brutal truth hurt far worse than the pike in his chest or the cowering fear of the Dark Side.
Kenobi was right.
The Sith would die with him.
At the pinnacle of their might.
At the apotheosis of their triumph over the Jedi.
The Order destroyed.
The Jedi slaughtered.
The Republic they served gone with the stroke of his pen.
And the Sith would still perish.
Sidious screamed in rage as Obi-Wan closed his eyes and whispered into the Force.
Three names.
Qui-Gon Jinn
Satine Kryze
Anakin Skywalker
With a brutal downward thrust straight into the heart of Darkness the last Sith Lord fell beneath the blade of a Jedi.
Not the last Jedi, though.
Never the last.
Obi-Wan allowed himself a moment of remorse, a moment of relief and rage and exhaustion before he remembered where he was. Escape would be difficult but not impossible.
Nothing was impossible with the Force.
“After the assassination of the putative Emperor Palpatine, the Galactic Republic was thrown into chaos as the two sides warred for control, fascists versus republicans. Individual Separatist systems were courted by one side or the other, both desperate to gain a majority over the other.
“The Jedi seemed to vanish overnight as if the Emperor had simply swept them off the board. They made a few appearances after Operation Knightfall, mostly to rescue imprisoned colleagues or to accept the allegiance of Republic ships that wished to defect.
According to some reports, the Jedi, in a fleet numbering as little as one to as many as ten battle cruisers, took off for the Unknown Regions, determined to leave behind the Galaxy that betrayed them while others believed that they would return one day, stronger and in greater numbers.
They would return when the Galaxy needed them most.
I cannot say one way or the other what happened to General Kenobi after his brilliant assault on the Citadel and the rescue of his brothers and sisters there, but selfishly admit to hoping that he is still out there, the last great Jedi Master watching over us and still finding this galaxy worthy of protecting.”
-Excerpt from Jedi v Sith: The Definitive History of the Galactic Civil War and the Plot to Destroy Democracy by Dr. Quetz Tinneranda of the University of Alderaan
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