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Anakin is decently certain that this is a nightmare. Why else would he find himself in a sand dune? Oh, and look — Two suns! — It’s a sand dune on Tatooine, no less. He doesn’t need this. He doesn’t know why he allowed himself to be convinced to return to the downed Fallen Hand to retrieve the body of Count Dooku. Surely he’d done his part by stopping him and saving the Chancellor. Someone else could deal with clean-up, but of course, most competent Jedi were off-world, and you couldn’t expect Master Yoda to see the body of his former Padawan without a head, so it was up to him and Obi-Wan to deal with it in case the dead Sith had any last surprises. So maybe this isn’t a normal nightmare, but some Sith-induced madness which only makes him think he's in a pile of Tatooine sand. It’s terribly realistic though.
To not fall into a pit of despair, Anakin clings to the memory of Padmé telling him she’s pregnant and Obi-Wan mentioning that Ahsoka’s en route already with Maul apprehended. The memories bring a smile to his face. He’s going to become a father. He might get his Padawan back. The war will be over. All in all, it’s been a good day. And he’s so, so happy about it.
Too bad the universe has seen fit to balance out the good with sand.
He spits out a spattering of grains, wishes for some water to rinse his mouth, and knows he won’t get any for some time unless this bout of madness subsides as suddenly as it started. He lies still for a hopeful moment, giving it a chance to do just that. When nothing happens, he rolls over on his back, holds his arm up to shield his eyes from the glare of the suns, and tries his wrist-com. There are relays around the planet that should enable him to get a signal. He’s boosted his com device’s capacities enough to trust it in any given situation, this one included.
He gets a signal alright, but it won’t connect to a single person he tries to contact, telling him they are all inoperational.
“Kark it.”
It’s just like Sith technology to perfectly capture the planet he hates the most while denying him a means of escape.
With a tired groan, Anakin forces himself to his feet, brushing away sand as he goes. Some has managed to get inside his clothes. And his boots. He knows taking them off will end up making it worse. He’ll have to suffer.
Back straightened, he pulls up the hood of his cloak, glad that he’d grabbed a new one while at the Temple. The position of the suns hints at it being morning, and if it’s this warm already, it’ll be scorching hot in no time.
There’s no civilization in sight, no trails, no vaporators, no glints of metal or glass. Luckily for him, he’s got another sense than sight to draw on. At least he hopes he does in this simulation or whatever it is, and — yeah, he does. A little concentration and he centres on his awareness of the Force.
The desert is more full of life than he’d like to admit, preferring to find every part of it detestable. Small insects, arachnids, crustaceans, as well as the odd plant and vertebrate make their life under the surface and in the crags of rocks, and the Force sings with their presence. Sentients are fewer and farther between. So, that’s confirmed. He’s not appeared near any settlements. Which is great. Just great. All he wanted after being awake for seventy hours, fighting for half of them and then discussing and mincing his every action with a gaggle of simpering senators and the Jedi High Council afterwards was to walk miles through a desert.
As he’s about to pick a direction at random, he senses one signature moving rapidly. And it’s moving somewhat in his direction if he can gauge it right. There are two types of people to be found in the wilds of Tatooine: the ones who are rough and cruel and would rob you blind given half a chance — they are sadly in the vast majority — and the honourable ones who see it as their duty to help people who’ve become stranded, in the hopes that when misfortune strikes them, someone will show them kindness in return. From this distance, Anakin can’t tell which category this approaching person will fall into, but he figures he can handle himself if need be. He has his lightsaber and — oh. He doesn’t have his lightsaber — his fingers grasp at empty air as he reaches for the familiar comfort of the cylinder that should hang from his belt. Well, things are looking up, aren’t they?
There’s nothing for it. There’s a speeder headed his way, and he will leave on it one way or another.
Anakin trudges up the nearest ridge to be better visible and makes it to the top in time to see the speeder coming around another dune.
“Hey!” he yells, waving his arms above his head. And then, no matter how much it grates — he’s become used to giving aid to civilians and his fellow Jedi, to not need it himself — “Help!”
The speeder slows down, and Anakin slides down the dune, approaching slowly with his hands up to show that he means no harm.
A young man, hardly more than a kid really, hops out of the speeder, rifle held loosely but at the ready. A farmer’s son judging by the clothes. He wears no armour of metal or leather like a bounty hunter or a smuggler would. And the loose sun-bleached hair that falls into his eyes is not something hardened people would be caught dead with. It’s too impractical by far. Anakin would know, but he’ll get past this stage and get hair that’s long enough to bind back. It might take longer than it should with how often it’s damaged in battle. But he will get there.
“What are you doing out here?” the kid asks.
The Force cries no warnings. He can be trusted to not be outright hostile or aggressive. That’s good. The Force cries other things though. That it likes this kid. He’s strong in the Force. Very strong, Anakin would wager, albeit untrained. There are no shields to speak of. He could have made a great Jedi if the Order had found him early enough to be accepted as an initiate. As it is, he’ll probably be able to sense when he’s lied to. Best stick with the truth — or a version of it anyhow. There are no hold-ups to the Force about omissions. Obi-Wan taught him well.
“Got into some trouble,” Anakin says. “Woke up on the other side of that dune. How far out are we from any settlements?”
“On foot? I’d take you most of a day to reach Anchorhead, I think.”
Anakin grimaces. It’s not as bad as it could be. Nor is it anywhere near good. It’s not a trip he’d like to make without supplies and while low on energy. If he remembers the terrain right from the stories he heard as a child, it’s not easily traversed in this area.
“Would you mind giving me a lift part of the way?”
“Normally I’d say yes, but one of my uncle’s droids ran away, and I really need to retrieve it, and Anchorage is in the other direction.”
“Master Luke, should you be talking to this stranger? He seems terribly suspicious.”
Anakin looks around the kid to see the droid sitting in the passenger seat of the speeder. He’s scruffed, much of the gold plating worn, but he’s unmistakable.
“He’ll hurt us for sure,” the droid goes on, and if there was any doubt about its identity, the words and the nervous cadence take it away.
“See-Threepio?” Anakin walks up to the speeder to take a closer look. “What happened to you?”
“Do you know me, sir?” asks, voice getting drowned out by the kid’s simultaneous question, “Do you know him?”
“Of course, I know you!” Anakin answers Threepio. “Don’t you remember me?”
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
Now Anakin rounds on the kid. “What have you done to him? Did you erase his memories?”
The kid takes a firmer grip on his rifle, and Anakin steps back, holding up his hands again. He shouldn’t get angry so quickly. Not until he’s seen that it’s warranted. But damn this innocent-looking boy if he’s harmed Threepio.
“No,” the kid says. “My uncle bought him from some jawas yesterday. If his memory’s been wiped, they’re likely the ones who did it.”
“I beg your pardon, but my memory is perfectly fine. I remember my former master Captain Antilles perfectly well. I served as an interpreter aboard his ship helping Senator Organa on various relief missions.”
“Senator Organa? Did Padmé lend you to him?”
“I don’t know who that is, but I suppose it’s possible if you are correct about the state of my memory.”
“If you don’t remember me, your memory’s definitely been tampered with. I built you, Threepio.”
“You built me! My, I find that hard to believe. It is hardly a credible story. No offence meant, sir.”
Anakin snorts. “So, you’re not capable of over six million forms of communication, you’re not specialised in protocols and etiquette and you don’t have processors from both Czerca and LeisureMech although most of your chassis was built by Cybot? Though the plating was added later and custom work, and it’s generally thought unwise to mix processor parts from different manufacturers.”
Threepio’s whole upper body swivels between Anakin and the kid. “Unwise!” he eventually exclaims. “If it’s unwise, why would you do such a thing? Is it because of this that I don’t remember?”
“Nah. Your processors are good. I guarantee it. As to why, I only had access to scrap when I built you. I made do.”
“I see. But, sir, what else don’t I remember? I’m imagining what I might have said and done and it’s most frightful! Please, if you know me, as you seem to, tell me I wasn’t an embarrassment.”
“You've never been an embarrassment,” Anakin says, fully truthful. Not that everyone would agree. Threepio has tested the patience of plenty of people for sure with his nervousness and run-on monologues. Anakin for his part feels only fondness and he knows Padmé feels the same. Everyone else can go hang.
“Maybe your memory hasn’t been wiped, just blocked?” he suggests. He twists his mouth, thinking of his own less than spotless memory. “Or whatever happened to me happened to you too.”
“You’ve lost your memory?” the kid asks.
“I’ve lost some time, yeah.”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Threepio says. “My counterpart Artoo Deetoo seems to think he’s on an important mission to save the Galaxy and that he must find General Kenobi.”
“Artoo and Obi-Wan are here too?”
“Hold up,” the kid says. “This is getting to be a bit much. You know the astromech too?”
“Grey and white with blue details? Smooth top dome? Argues non-stop with Threepio?”
The kid nods.
“Then yes. Yes, I do.”
“I suppose you should come with me to find him if you’d like. An old man called Ben Kenobi lives in the direction we’re going. Might be that your R2-unit thinks he’s this Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
Anakin studies the kid. He radiates earnestness, and by radiates, Anakin means nothing less than emitting it with the luminosity of a giant star in the supernova phase of its life. It's impossible to resist the offer.
“Thank you,” he says and smiles, giving his hand to shake. “Did I hear right that your name was Luke?”
“That’s right, yeah. I’m Luke.” He takes Anakin’s hand, giving the metal fingers a firm shake, not seeming to notice that it’s not flesh and bone under the glove.
“It’s good to meet you, Luke. My name’s Anakin.”
Luke’s eyes grow round, making the blue of them stand out. Anakin twitches as Luke’s surprise sends a twinge of warning through the Force. Then Luke shakes his head.
“What?” Anakin asks.
“Probably just a coincidence. You’re from Tatooine, right? I think I can hear it in your voice. Must just be a popular name around here. My father’s name was Anakin.”
“Oh.” His smile slips away. “I see. That’s a funny coincidence.” He doesn’t think it’s funny, but so goes the phrase. Something about it prickles at his spine like one of Obi-Wan’s bad feelings. “We should get going.”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” Luke picks up on his mood and lets it go, for which Anakin’s grateful. “Threepio, you can sit up back.”
“Why, I never…!” Threepio exclaims. “I’m going to fall off the speeder for sure, left in the sand again to wither away until my sensors fail.”
“We’re not going to let you fall.” Anakin pats Threepio on the shoulder, helping the droid settle up top behind the two seats. “And first chance I get, I’m taking a look at your memory core.” He narrows his eyes, looking over the droid. “And your hip joints.”
“That would be most appreciated, sir. Master Luke generously gave me an oil bath last night, but my joints are not as they should be. This environment is doing me no favours. Did you know Artoo-Deetoo and I crashed in an escape pod and then after walking around half the night we were captured by these terribly rude creatures? I thought we were done for, that we’d be scrapped for parts!”
And so it continues as Luke drives them on at great speed, the dunes giving way to crags as Threepio mixes lament of his fate with gratitude to Luke and Luke’s uncle and with prophecies of the ill fortune that will befall them shortly.
Luke concentrates on steering the speeder and following Artoo’s tracks, while Anakin finds himself losing a battle against sleep. The Force hums that it is safe to rest, and sitting down in the leather seat of the speeder, with its engine thrumming through his body, is relaxing. He dozes lightly against his will, only coming back to full wakefulness when they’ve stopped and the Force cries out about danger.
He listens to Artoo, and it’s Artoo, alright, rambling on about needing to find General Kenobi then abruptly switching to warn them of incoming creatures. Anakin can sense them too. Tuskens.
“We should leave,” Anakin says.
Artoo sputters at his voice. Asking where he came from. How he’s here. Insisting he’s an anomaly.
“Nice to see you too. I’m having an off day. I don't know how I ended up here. Why are you here?”
Artoo answers with a single word: classified.
“Classified? What do you mean, classified?”
That he can’t tell anyone, is the reply. As they argue, the Tuskens take their chance, and Anakin is having none of it.
“Take cover!” he shouts and forces Luke and the droids to get down. He might not have his lightsaber, but he doesn’t need one to deal with these savages. They’ll never hurt anyone on his watch again.
Obi-Wan has felt for days that something big is coming, a change, a beginning to the end if you want to be dramatic. When he went into the canyon, he expected to find three things. Sand. Tusken Raiders. Luke. He did not expect to find Anakin’s two droids and Anakin himself.
It might be that he has gone mad at last, seeing an apparition of young Anakin fight tuskens with a ferocity Obi-Wan at one point never imagined him capable of. Then young Anakin comes to a still, panting, turns his head to find Obi-Wan’s eyes, says his name — “Obi-Wan!” — and promptly collapses in a dead faint, sending Luke into a flurry and the droids scurrying forward. Whatever spell had come over Obi-Wan breaks. He has to admit this isn’t a hallucination. It’s reality. A bogus reality to be sure, but reality nevertheless. He sets into dealing with this nonsense so he won’t give in to the temptation to cry or laugh or do something else inadvisable, such as killing Anakin, which would surely lose him Luke’s trust.
“Careful with his head,” he says to Luke and steadies him as he lifts Anakin from the ground and into the speeder. Together they fold him into the seat and if Obi-Wan lingers a bit too long when he brushes the hair away from Anakin’s face, Luke is kind enough to pretend not to notice.
“Where did you find him?”
“He found me. Said he’d woken up in a dune. He wanted help getting to Anchorhead. I was supposed to take him there once I found my droid. You’re Ben Kenobi, right? My droid insists he belongs to you. Or well, to an Obi-Wan Kenobi. Do you know him?”
“I do. In a manner of speaking. I was once Obi-Wan Kenobi, but I can’t seem to remember ever owning a droid.” He looks at Artoo with raised eyebrows.
The droid insists he has a message for General Kenobi.
“Is that so? Well, we’d better take this inside. More Tuskens are sure to be along to care for… their fallen.” Obi-Wan can’t pay them much attention. He cannot bear it.
With some bustling and more swearing from Artoo than Obi-Wan thought he’d ever hear again, they make it to Obi-Wan’s home and the relative safety of his four walls.
Once more, Obi-Wan lingers longer than he maybe ought to at Anakin’s side as he settles the young man in his bed. It seems a curse and a blessing both to see him at this age. He’s not the Sith he became, nor is he an innocent youth. He’s seen war. His lack of hesitation with the Tuskens says as much if not more. It’s worrying and something Obi-Wan will have to deal with in short order, but any time he can get before then is welcome. He presses a sleep suggestion into Anakin’s mind. It takes root easily with the trust and love Anakin still holds for him.
Unable to stay any longer, Obi-Wan turns to Luke and the explanations he needs. And when he puts them to pause to see the message Artoo is carrying for him, he dearly wishes he could join Anakin in sleep. If he felt too old the last time Leia asked for his help, he doesn’t know if there are words to express how out of his depth he feels this time.
Anakin comes back to wakefulness in a cramped space. His spine is out of alignment and his knees are much too close to his face. The air is heavily saturated with his breath and he needs to get out. Pushing with his feet only makes him groan as it sends loud reverberations through the metal he’s enclosed in. Claustrophobic panic sets in and he pushes with the Force, tearing the metal loose with another scrape and a bang. He jumps up, ready, because someone will surely have noticed the ruckus.
Except there’s no evidence there’s anyone around. He’s in an empty ship. Its engines are silent. That’s good for him. Means they’re not in flight, so he’ll be able to escape. Though he has no idea how he ended up there. He was sure he was on Coruscant, then on Tatooine with a nice kid and… Obi-Wan? Things are a bit blurry.
He looks at the cramped space a bit closer. A smuggler’s hold? How dare someone put him in a place like that? It’s not for people. He could have suffocated. Well, whoever the kark stuffed him in there isn’t around to learn of his displeasure. The destroyed hatch will have to do as a parting gift.
He stumbles into the next room, a more comfortable one than the cargo bay, and if that isn’t his lightsaber lying abandoned on the floor, he’s a bantha’s ass. He could have sworn he lost it. Not that he’s complaining. It’ll give Obi-Wan one thing less to lord over him. Now to find the exit.
Darth Vader thinks the day is looking up. It started dismally with the rebels getting away with the information at the Battle of Scarif and continued in the same vein when they were nowhere to be found on board Senator Organa’s ship. The destruction of Alderaan has hardly improved matters. He can imagine the absolute headache Coruscant will turn into with all the outrage from the news. It makes a prolonged struggle with the Rebels seem almost tempting in comparison.
But then he’d felt something he’d not felt for nearly ten years. Obi-Wan. This disaster will be mitigated by the death of his old Master. He will return to the ship he arrived on sooner or later. Vader need only wait.
His patience pays off with Obi-Wan appearing before him, the same serene calm he cloaked himself with at times during the Clone Wars softening his wizened face. The battle that follows is far more metaphysical than either of their previous bouts. To an outsider, blind to the Force, they must seem like feeble old men, hesitantly beating glow sticks together.
Feeble step, clash. Slow twirl, clash, clash. Tap. Riposte. Two steps to the side.
The truth of the matter is that they fight over control of the Force, finding themselves at a stalemate, neither one capable of moving the other. There are no mountain’s worth of rocks for Obi-Wan to throw at him. And Obi-Wan’s too slippery for Vader to get a good grasp of his throat.
Vader wants to shout at him to desist, to give up, to accept the inevitable. The dark side is stronger and it is coursing through Vader truer than his blood, so of course, the tide turns in his favour. There was no other way it could end. He’s posed to strike his old Master down, and no ominous words cautioning him against it will stop him, when Obi-Wan is yanked out of reach. He follows his old Master’s trajectory, and his feet lock to the floor when he sees who’s pulled him and who is pulling the rest of the rebels aboard the freighter. It is Anakin Skywalker. Impossibly it is him from twenty years before. Somewhere between nineteen and twenty years ago, to be precise. He knows himself, and no pretender could fool him. That glare speaks of the same rage that lives within Vader. Though speaking of rage, it’s ebbing away to make room for a swelling sense of confusion.
“What?” he says, dumbly watching the ship get away.
Anakin is clinging to the back of the pilot’s seat, wishing he was the one at the controls. He doesn’t trust this guy. Doesn’t know him. And Obi-Wan… Where is Obi-Wan? They transition into hyperspace, and Anakin lets go of the backrest to find his Master. He’s in the galley, and soon so are the rest. He's searching through cabinets with single minded-focus, Anakin knowing better than to interrupt when he’s in such a mood. He’s sure it holds true even though Obi-Wan looks about as old as Count Dooku. He’s as spry as the old Sith was before Anakin killed him.
“Do you want a hand, Master?” he asks. It’s easier to tease than to acknowledge that the state of things is as far removed from normal as Tatooine is from the Galactic Core.
Obi-Wan looks over his shoulder at him, seems to think it through more carefully than it merits then shrugs. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
“Hey! None of that,” the pilot says. “No one else is going to look through my stuff. And you, old man, are going to stop. What the hells do you think you’re doing?”
Obi-Wan stands up on the tip of his toes to reach into an overhead compartment. “You’re a smuggler, surely you must have… Ah-ha!” With a sound of triumph, he pulls out a bottle of Corellian whiskey.
“What? No, you don’t!” The pilot tries and fails to get the bottle from Obi-Wan.
“Oh, let him have it, Han,” the kid — Luke? — says.
The girl who's been with them since they got away from that large ship has her hands on her hips, a thoroughly unimpressed look on her face. “I think it would only be right to share.”
“Share!” the pilot protests.
“If you hadn’t noticed, we’ve all been through an ordeal today.”
Obi-Wan, who one moment ago looked like he was about to start chugging, delicately sets the bottle down on a table and slumps on the sofa. “Quite right,” he says. “We’ve all had a long day. I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Leia. Your parents were good people.”
“You lost your parents?” Anakin asks.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. Losing a parent is difficult.”
“I didn’t only lose them. I lost my entire planet.”
Anakin gapes. He looks to Obi-Wan for confirmation.
“The battle station we left has capabilities that are so terrible one might think it could never be used. Alas, the Sith thrive on such horror.”
“We’ll stop them. I don’t know what is going on, I don’t know why we were all on Tatooine or why you look so old or where we’re going, but I know that. We’ll stop them.”
“Yes,” Luke says. His eyes are so bright. “I don’t know much about what’s going on either and I can’t use a lightsaber like you can. You were amazing, by the way, but I want to learn. Ben’s already promised to teach me. Will you teach me too?”
Anakin’s not immune to such clear worship. It settles something inside him and warms him up. He likes this kid. He sees why the Force does too.
“Sure,” he says, feeling a grin forming on his face. “You know, I never caught your last name.”
Obi-Wan fumbles for the whiskey bottle, draws out the cork with his teeth, and starts chugging.