clone wars one shots

― red tears and red hands

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.