Work Text:
Obi-Wan’s breath caught in his throat, and he couldn’t quite keep his voice from breaking as he reported what he’d found to Tala. It was a hurried, inadequate description, but no words could describe the sickening discovery in front of him.
An eerie glow lit the preservation tanks, as if to show off the corpses like trophies. No doubt the Inquisitors considered them as such. Obi-Wan had seen so much of the Sith’s cruelty in his life, yet he somehow remained freshly horrified at each new confrontation with it. He could see the terror etched on the faces of the dead, accentuated by the dim glow surrounding their suspended forms.
He could not look away, and advanced slowly towards each one, even as he dreaded that he would see the faces of people he had known. Because they were undoubtedly Jedi, these unfortunate people, and even the ones Obi-Wan didn’t recognize had been his family, too.
And it was not just the sight that pressed into the decade-long ache in his chest. He could feel it, too, the traces and echoes of the souls who had once existed within the now dead flesh, a cruel mockery of how it had once felt to be in the Temple, surrounded by the familiar presences of other Jedi. It was the closest he had experienced in years, and it brought him no comfort to find this only in a twisted simulacrum.
There was a reason Jedi burned their dead. All beings had a presence in the Force, left emotional impressions of themselves behind. Psychometric Jedi could pick up even more, words and memories of those long-gone. But those strong in the Force tended to leave stronger impressions, or at least they resonated more with others attuned to the Force as they had been. And that impression persisted strongly in the body, even long after the soul had left.
There had been some Jedi scholars who had theorized that the strong impression meant that the soul hadn’t, in fact, left, and that burning was necessary to allow a person to fully join the Force. It wasn’t the conventional belief anymore, but the thought still crossed Obi-Wan’s mind.
No, the real reason for burning was for just the reason he saw before him. Sith, and others, would keep the bodies of Jedi. Not just as trophies, but for terrible experiments as well. Were they being used for such a purpose here, as well?
Or perhaps there was another reason. This fortress, apparently, was for the Inquisitors. The Jedi in the tanks were not just their kills, but their future, if they ever turned away from the Empire. It was insurance.
And how effective it must be, to have this constant reminder. The motionless dead, suspended in tanks, staring down at you as you walked through their halls. Living in a tomb, not constructed to venerate the dead but to venerate death. Oh how the Sith worshiped death, as much as they feared it. Perhaps because they feared it. If the point was to be in fear and misery, why wouldn’t they worship their greatest source of it? Down here in the dark, death seemed oppressively inexorable, and how could one ever find peace with it?
It was a terrible, consuming trap, and Obi-Wan shuddered, only to still as he came face-to-face with a youngling.
A child. He knew, of course, that they had not been spared, that hologram of their deaths had haunted his nightmares for years. It still struck at his heart again.
Obi-Wan could do nothing for them, for any of them here, not even give them a proper funeral.
But there was a living child he was here for, and he could hear her calling.