(no subject)

[ihateflying]

This is Obi-Wan in the Light:

As he is prodded onto the bridge along with Anakin and Chancellor Palpatine, he has no need to look around to see the banks of control consoles tended by terrified Neimoidians. He doesn't have to turn his head to count the droidekas and super battle droids, or to gauge the positions of the brutal droid bodyguards. He doesn't bother to raise his eyes to meet the cold yellow stare fixed on him through a skull mask of armoplast.

He doesn't even need to reach into the Force.

He has already let the Force reach into him.

The Force flows over him and around him as though he has stepped into a crystal-pure waterfall lost in the green coils of a forgotten rain forest; when he opens himself to that sparkling stream it flows into him and through him and out again without the slightest interference from his conscious will. Obi-Wan Kenobi is no more than a ripple, an eddy in the pool into which he endlessly pours.

There are other parts of him here, as well; there is nothing here that is not a part of him, from the scruff mark on R2-D2's dome to the tattered hem of Palpatine's robe, from the spidering crack in one transparisteel panel of the curving view wall above to the great starships that battle beyond it.

Because this is all part of the Force.

Somehow, mysteriously, the cloud that has darkened the Force for near to a decade and a half has lightened around him now, and he finds within himself the limpid clarity he recalls from his schooldays at the Jedi Temple, when the force was pure, and clean, and perfect. It is as though the darkness has withdrawn, has coiled back upon itself, to allow him this moment of clarity, to return to him the full power of the light, if only for a moment; he does not know why, but he is incapable of even wondering. In the Force, he is beyond questions.

Why is meaningless, it is the echo of the past, or a whisper from the future. All that matters, for this infinite now, is what, and where, and who.

He is all sixteen of the super battle droils, gleaming in laser-reflective chrome, arms loaded with heavy blasters. He is those blasters, and he is their targets. He is all eight destroyer droids, waiting with electronic patience within their energy shields, and both body guards, and every single one of the shivering Neimoidians. He is their clothes, their boots, even each drop of reptile scented moisture that rolls of them from the misting sprays they use to keep their temperatures down. He is the binders that cuff his hands, and he is the electrostaff in the hands of the bodyguard at his back.

He is both the lightsabers that the other droid bodyguard marches forward to offer to General Grievous.

And he is the general himself.

He is the general's duranium ribs. He is the beating of Grievous's alien heart, and he is the silent pulse of oxygen pumped through his alien veins. He is the weight of four lightsabers at the general's belt, and is the greedy anticipation the captured weapons sparked behind the general's eyes. He is even the plan for his own execution simmering within the general's brain.

He is all of these things, but most important he is still Obi-Wan Kenobi.

This is why he can simply stand. Why he can simply wait. He has no need to attack, or to defend. There will be battle here, but he is perfectly at ease, perfectly content to let the battle start when it will start, and end when it will end.

Just as he will let himself live, or let himself die.

This is how a great Jedi makes war.

(Quote from Return of The Sith Novelization, written by Matthew Stover)