Obi-Wan knelt beside Padme's unconscious body, where she lay limp and broken in the smoky dusk. He felt for a pulse. It was thin, and erratic. "Anakin—Anakin, what have you done?"
In the Force, Anakin burned like a fusion torch. "You turned her against me."
Obi-Wan looked at the best friend he had ever had. "You did that yourself," he said sadly.
"I'll give you a chance, Obi-Wan. For old times' sake. Walk away."
"If only I could."
"Go some place out of the way. Retire. Meditate. That's what you like, isn't it? You don't have to fight for peace anymore. Peace is here. My Empire is peace."
"Your Empire? It will never have peace. It was founded on treachery and innocent blood."
"Don't make me kill you, Obi-Wan. If you are not with me, you are against me."
"Only Sith deal in absolutes, Anakin. The truth is never black and white." He rose, spreading empty hands. "Let me take Padme to a medcenter. She's hurt, Anakin. She needs medical attention."
"She stays."
"Anakin—"
"You don't get to take her anywhere. You don't get to touch her. She's mine, do you understand? It's your fault, all of it—you made her betray me!"
"Anakin—"
Anakin's hand sprouted a bar of blue plasma.
Obi-Wan sighed.
He brought out his own lighstaber and angled it before him. "Then I will do what I must."
"You'll try," Anakin said, and leapt.
Obi-Wan met him in the air.
Blue blades crossed, and the volcano above echoed their lightning with a shout of fire.
C-3PO cautiously poked his head around the rim of the skiff's hatch.
Though his threat-avoidance subroutines were in full screaming overload, and all he really wanted to be doing was finding some nice dark closet in which to fold himself and power down until this was all over—preferably an armored closet, with a door that locked from the inside, or could be welded shut (he wasn't particular on that point)—he found himself nonetheless creeping down the skiff's landing ramp into what appeared to be a perfectly appalling rain of molten lava and burning cinders…
Which was an entirely ridiculous thing for any sensible droid to be doing, but he kept going because he hadn't liked the sound of those conversations at all.
Not one little bit.
He couldn't be entirely certain what the disagreement among the humans was concerned with, but one element had been entirely clear.
She's hurt, Anakin... she needs medical attention... He shuffled out into the swirling smoke. Burning rocks clattered around him. The Senator was nowhere to be seen, and even if he could find her, he had no idea how he could get her back to her ship—he certainly had not been designed for transporting anything heavier than a tray of cocktails; after all, weight-bearing capability was what cargo droids were for—but through the volcano's roar and the gusts of wind, his sonoreceptors picked up a familiar ferooo-wheep peroo, which his autotranslation protocol converted to DON'T WORRY, YOU'LL BE ALL RIGHT.
"Artoo?" C-3PO called. "Artoo, are you out here?"
A few steps more and C-3PO could see the little astromech: he'd tangled his manipulator arm in the Senator's clothing and was dragging her across the landing deck. "Artoo! Stop that this instant! You'll damage her!"
R2-D2's dome swiveled to bring his photoreceptor to bear on the nervous protocol droid. WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU SUGGEST? it whistled.
"Well... oh, all right. We'll do it together."
…
Blade-to-blade, they were identical. After thousands of hours in lightsaber sparring, they knew each other better than brothers, more intimately than lovers; they were complementary halves of a single warrior.
In every exchange, Obi-Wan gave ground. It was his way. And he knew that to strike Anakin down would burn his own heart to ash.
Exchanges flashed. Leaps were sideslipped or met with flying kicks; ankle sweeps skipped over and punches parried. The door of the control center fell in pieces, and then they were inside among the bodies. Consoles exploded in fountains of white-hot sparks as they ripped free of their moorings and hurtled through the air. Dead hands spasmed on triggers and blaster bolts sizzled through impossibly intricate lattices of ricochet.
Obi-Wan barely caught some and flipped them at Anakin: a desperation move. Anything to distract him; anything to slow him down. Easily, contemptuously, Anakin sent them back, and the bolts flared between their blades until their galvening faded and the particles of the packeted beams dispersed into radioactive fog.
"Don't make me destroy you, Obi-Wan." Anakin's voice had gone deeper than a well and bleak as the obsidian cliffs. "You're no match for the power of the dark side."
"I've heard that before," Obi-Wan said through his teeth, parrying madly, "but I never thought I'd hear it from you."
A roar of the Force blasted Obi-Wan back into a wall, smashing breath from his lungs, leaving him swaying, half stunned. Anakin stepped over bodies and lifted his blade for the kill.
Obi-Wan had only one trick left, one that wouldn't work twice—
But it was a very good trick.
It had, after all, worked rather splendidly on Grievous…
He twitched one finger, reaching through the Force to reverse the polarity of the electrodrivers in Anakin's mechanical hand.
Durasteel fingers sprang open, and a lightsaber tumbled free.
Obi-Wan reached. Anakin's lightsaber twisted in the air and flipped into his hand. He poised both blades in a cross before him. "The flaw of power is arrogance."
"You hesitate," Anakin said. "The flaw of compassion—"
"It's not compassion," Obi-Wan said sadly. "It's reverence for life. Even yours. It's respect for the man you were."
He sighed. "It's regret for the man you should have been."
Anakin roared and flew at him, using both the Force and his body to crash Obi-Wan back into the wall once more. His hands seized Obi-Wan's wrists with impossible strength, forcing his arms wide. "I am so sick of your lectures!"
Dark power bore down with his grip.
Obi-Wan felt the bones of his forearms bending, beginning to feather toward the greenstick fractures that would come before the final breaks.
Oh, he thought. Oh, this is bad.
…