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Hello, there. Join me as I meditate.
I sit here, trying to figure out the best words to leave my last, best student.
It sends me back - to my training with Yoda as a child on Coruscant. Using a training saber, being baited into violent attack by a bully. Back to my training with Qui-Gon, my beloved master. The intensity of our adventures. My initial love of flying, crushed by my mishap on Pijal. The intensity of our losses. Tahl. Siri.
The loss of Qui-Gon himself. That loss turning into a hole in my heart as searing as the one which killed him, filled with my new responsibilities as master to that boy. Anakin.
Sometimes I wish I'd never asked Artoo to give me all the recordings he had of Anakin talking about me before I gave him to Bail Organa. Wish I'd never watched them as I sat on Tatooine, trying to heal from the loss of everything I knew, loved, and believed in. Anakin was arrogant, broken, cruel, immature. But right. I didn't let him grow up. I didn't listen - insecure in my own authority. It was hard, seeing how easily Anakin took to everything I had found so hard. Through sheer stubbornness and intelligence, I found efficiencies which allowed me great feats of telekinesis despite no real aptitude for it. I wasn't like Nejaa Halcyon, unable to use telekinesis at all unless he absorbed energy - another great loss, as he sacrificed himself to save myself and our Caamasi Jedi friend on Susevfi. But I was weaker than the "standard" Jedi, requiring that I find an elusive flow state to perform anywhere close to Anakin's effortless matter manipulation. I was jealous. I still think I was right to hold him back - but I didn't explain why. Because I wanted him to see the impact of his power, not just the potential. But since I never did tell him that, it was intensely unfair to the boy and man I'd come to love as much as I'd loved Qui-Gon. He was so strong, so kind. And in the end, that strength and kindness turned to rage that devoured the whole galaxy.
And in response, my own rage took me to a dark place. Finding his son at his most vulnerable point. Giving him half truths - all right, lies. "Your father wanted you to have this" - nonsense, Obi-Wan, you plucked the saber from the ground, next to his burning severed arm and legs as he screamed at you. "I hate you."
It still rings in my ears.
I heard it as I handed him the lightsaber. Told him that his father was dead, not the machine-man-monster who'd captured his sister - who I also refused to tell him about, despite his concerning infatuation. Why didn't I even just tell Artoo "Well done". Threepio wouldn't remember - too many memory wipes - but Artoo clearly remembered everything.
But no, I had to maintain the high ground. Despite me knowing that arrogance in having the high ground could cost me everything, like it cost the Sith who killed Qui-Gon.
So I shaped Luke - so like his father, so eager, so powerful, so kind - into a lightsaber and pointed it straight at the heart of the two men who'd destroyed my world. At the cult which had festered in the heart of the Republic I served and loved my whole life, corrupting it into something I didn't recognize. Luke would take the righteous revenge of the Jedi.
But I was wrong. Somehow, Luke proved Qui-Gon right, after all. The Chosen One destroyed the Sith and brought balance to the Force by banishing the parasitic Dark. Through love. Through...attachment. The love of Anakin for his son. I watched, and I'd never known such grief. Nor such pride. The boy I trained turned his back on the dark, and turned to the light, just as Qui-Gon taught me, so many years before. Instead of a revenge, the Jedi returned in justice.
But there's more for the Chosen One to do. True balance isn't merely banishing or destroying. It's about building. And I have to figure out how to help Luke find that next step. I can't reach him much longer - indeed, I can sense that a dream apparition will be the only way to speak clearly to him now. Qui-Gon and even Anakin have mastered riding the balance between the living world and the luminous world much better than I ever will - as usual. It's good that I no longer feel the envy I used to of Anakin. He'll have important work to do. But not for decades.
My work here, however, is almost done, and yet I must do it right.
And suddenly, I know what I have to say. Trusting the Force, I call out. "Luke?"
"Hello, Ben," the boy says, looking at me in his dream, a bit foggy, but the same trust and love in his blue eyes that I saw 10 years ago. "Been a long time."
"It has indeed," I reply gravely. "And I'm afraid that it will be longer still until the next time. I've come to say goodbye, Luke." He looks around, realizing he's asleep on Coruscant.
"No, I'm not a dream," I assure him. "But the distances separating us have become too great for me to appear to you in any other way. Now, even this last path is being closed to me."
"No, You can't leave us, Ben. We need you." I can see the sadness in his face, but I know he's wrong. He's grown so much, so I smile slightly and answer.
"You don't need me, Luke. You are a Jedi, strong in the Force." My smile fades, and I see some of the difficulties ahead of him. Red eyes, blue skin, yellow eyes, endless hate, scores of fallen Jedi...
"At any rate," I add quietly, "the decision is not mine to make. I have lingered too long already, and can no longer postpone my journey from this life to what lies beyond. It is the pattern of all life to move on. You, too, will face this same journey one day." Difficulties, yes...but also joys. I see red hair, green eyes. "You are strong in the Force, Luke, and with perseverance and discipline you will grow stronger still. But you must never relax your guard. The Emperor is gone, but the dark side is still powerful. Never forget that."
"I won't," Luke promises. I smile again.
"You will yet face great dangers, Luke. But you will also find new allies, at times and places where you expect them least."
"New allies?" Red hair, green eyes. "Who are they?" I cannot tell him too much.
"And now, farewell. I loved you as a son, and as a student, and as a friend." It seems to be my fate not to tell the people I love the most the truth until the end. "I hate you."
"Until we meet again, may the Force be with you." I turn to go, and the dream begins fading as Luke's mind awakens.
"Ben—!" I hear his thoughts. Then I am alone. I am the last of the Jedi.
And the Force prompts me, one last time. "Not the last of the old Jedi, Luke. The first of the new."