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Year 7968
Obi-Wan is hiding on Tatooine.
Hiding on Tatooine.
It is not something he is proud of. There is not much in his life to be proud of, now. Once a member of the High Council, a master in the Jedi Order, what is he now? Another gutless worm ekeing out a living on this miserable dustball of a planet. Another faceless weary drone desperately grasping at seasonal work when he can get it. And carving up a sand whale? Oh, how are the mighty fallen.
He cannot recall life's simple pleasures after ten years here. Cannot recall the taste of clear water, or the sound of rain. Cannot recall what a cool breeze feels like. More importantly, he cannot remember what it feels like to have the Force flow through him anymore. He has cut himself off, living a half-life in the shadows, a forgotten man.
He hopes.
He hopes he has been forgotten, but fears he has not been. Knows. He knows. Why else would he bury their lightsabers in the sand? Why else would he endure this interminable existence? A Jedi was hanged in the square this last week, a Jedi that had reached out, begged for his help. What had he done, the great General Kenobi? Told the man to hide too, to live as a worm, fearful his presence would alert others to him. He sickens himself. It is no wonder that Lars keeps him at a distance.
He carries on with his life, such as it is. Bullied by his taskmaster, robbed by the Jawas. Not for the first time, as he unpacks, puts his blaster on the side, his hand shakes as he looks at the evidence of his sharp decline.
He has become uncivilised.
He doesn't know how to stop.
*
Ostensibly he is here to watch over Anakin's son. That's what Yoda knows. It's what Bail knows. He isn't communing with the Force, isn't honing his skills, doesn't try and talk to Qui-Gon like Yoda has dictated. He knows it will not work. If he cannot face the living, how is he going to face the dead?
He spends two days throwing up bile after Bail's communiqué. Impotent fear and worry steal sleep from his nights, and he sweats too much in the heat of the day as his body wars with his mind.
Bail's appearance is both disquieting and a relief; the man out of his mind with worry, saying whatever he needed to to provoke a reaction.
Deep in self-condemnation, Obi-Wan's mind latches on to the explicit order (you can save his daughter) and gratefully hangs on.
*
He finds Anakin's daughter easily enough. It helps that he bonded with her in the womb; he would recognise her Force signature blindfolded.
There is a ruthlessness to his unpractised violence as he sweeps through the spice house, revelling in the adrenaline. He doesn't care who gets caught in the explosion, doesn't care a rap for his own safety as his body struggles to remember how to move, how to maim. Anakin's daughter captured in a spice hell? Oh hell no. Everyone in it is fair game.
*
"You don't have to worry," the Inquisitor sing-songs, her voice a parody of concern as she swings a lightsaber she never earned, a kyber she never bonded to screaming in her service. "You're not going to die ... today."
He curls his lip. Someone might, he thinks viciously, hand curling easily around his saber's familiar hilt, the kyber ready and eager to be used against the dark.
"I'm just going ... to take you to him," she coos. "Lord Vader will be pleased."
Obi-Wan would bet against her on that. Lord Vader is pleased by very little. He sends a tendril of fear and shock into the Force as she probes clumsily at his shields.
She is distracted immediately. "You didn't know," she sing-songs with false pity. "He's alive, Obi-Wan. He's been looking for you-"
Why did she think he was hiding? It certainly wasn't from her. He allows his Force signature to flutter uncertainly, and she takes the bait, continuing to talk. He bites down on his surprise that she knows the name Anakin Skywalker, wonders what else she knows, wonders who else knows what she knows.
He takes advantage of the interruption to hightail it out of there.
He is a fool though. Even allowing himself to whisper Anakin's name is enough to jumpstart their connection.
Violent awareness floods their bond, and he stutters trying to close it again, the alpha so powerful he winds through Obi-Wan's mind even over the great distance. His belly clenches reflexively, and he squeezes his thighs together, sitting up ramrod straight.
No. His shields came up fast. He will not give in. Anakin's daughter is here, for one thing. Nothing Anakin or Vader are likely to do to him are things she needs to see.
*
She reminds him of young Anakin: small, bossy and opinionated. She's littler than he was though. And she argues a lot. The hurt that pierced his heart when she muttered, "Grandfather, maybe," on Daiyu still hasn't waned. She might have come around to believing him to be a Jedi, but she doesn't respect him.
He swallows the hurt - again - and remembers why he'd sent her away.
He clenches a fist, wondering how Bail would react if he'd known who he was sending after the child he had sworn to protect. A livid flash of anger when he remembers she was supposed to be protected on Alderaan, sheltered by the royal family.
He stretches his fingers, forcibly releasing his anger. Bail doesn't know. Nobody knows. Not even Anakin. And definitely not Vader.
*
She gets them into a bit of trouble.
He can't really fault her too much, he gets them into some too. "Leia was her mother's name," he lies sorrowfully. "I get confused."
It's a gratifying knife to the chest that they believe this without question. He must look a state.
Anakin's daughter is not aware of her Force-sensitivity, the protection he had laid over her and her brother holding strong, even ten years later. But she feels things, knows things she shouldn't. Knows he lies.
"The whole time I've known you, you've been hiding something, lying to me," she says reproachfully.
"Leia," he chides, adding to the layers of lies he's told.
"Are you my real father?" she asks, suddenly shrewd.
Arrested by the hope in her voice, his heart goes out to her. "I wish I could say I was," he says huskily. "But no, I'm not."
It's the truth, from a certain point of view. It passes her truth filter anyway. She believes him.
Stewjoni birthing fathers aren't a widely-known phenomenon. It's not something most would consider.
*
Tala is a breath of fresh air, but Obi-Wan is not sure how this Path can work effectively when the townfolk snitch on each other to the Empire. Perhaps it's just bad luck that it's all going wrong for him. He'd hate for his involvement to ruin this little pocket of rebels.
They almost escape. They're in the tunnels when the bitter cold hits him, the oppressive winter of Vader's presence almost brings him to his knees. He remembers the probe and winces. He should have destroyed it as soon as he saw it.
Vader draws him like a hypnotist, playing on his warring feelings of pity for his victims and anger at the manipulation. Vader wants him out in the open, and he will get it, by hook or crook.
Obi-Wan remembers Anakin liked being both bait and ambush, enjoying how their opponents underestimated him.
Vader doesn't give anyone the opportunity to underestimate him. From the heady mixture of horror and dread in the Force, everyone is spellbound by his mere presence, and as he gets closer, the feeling magnifies.
His shields don't fail. They don't.
He watches Vader halt and look at the building he's in. Stops breathing. Waits.
A slow trickle of slick slides out of him like warm butter.
Absolute mortified terror has him in a stranglehold for a moment.
Vader brings a hand up and pulls a man out of his home, right through the open window. He doesn't look away from Obi-Wan's hiding-place as he crushes the man's throat slowly, the inarticulate sounds of his slow death loud in the silent street.
"Stop!" a voice says. A kid. He bursts out of the door, "DAD!"
Vader slams him against the side of the house like a ragdoll, snaps his neck for good measure.
The cruelty kicks him into action. He sends Tala and Anakin's daughter on ahead of him. Makes a bargain with the Force: his life for Anakin's daughter's.
There is no answer.
*
He blunders out into Vader's orbit anyway. He has to get Vader away from them, away from people - he's dragging them down the street now. The cries are pitiful, horrifying, and all his fault.
He runs.
It's not a great plan, he'll admit, but it's working.
Vader pursues.
The Force is dense with Vader's heavy presence. There is no let-up from the oppressive weight of his singular focus.
A bright lance of pure screaming rage lights up red a hundred yards away. It glints off Vader's helmet.
Is he running in circles? his brain shrieks. How did he get here? Obi-Wan grips his lightsaber. Its familiar weight now feels like a child's toy; he hasn't wielded it for over eight years now. Buried it six years ago. What is he doing?
Vader waits.
It is the single most terrifying thing Anakin has ever done. If Anakin has conquered patience, then he is doomed.
Obi-Wan glances around, takes a deep breath and runs in another direction.
The darkness colludes with Vader. All he can see is the bright afterglow of Vader's saber, glowing green just to drive the knife in a little harder. He doesn't know where he's going now. Vader's presence is all around, and no direction gives clues which way might provide respite.
"You cannot run, Obi-Wan," that awful mechanical voice says from behind him.
He jerks around, lighting his saber reflexively. The brightness of his own blade blinds him now, and he feels a fool. If Vader hadn't known exactly where he was, he does now. He whirls around again, this way and that way, prodded by little eddies and currents in the Force. He cannot hear Vader's breathing ...
Vader is playing with him.
Finally he sees him, Vader stalking toward him unhurriedly, a massive robotic creation, a stylised skull of a mask, feral in the dim light.
"What have you become?" he stutters.
Vader's ominous presence blankets the air as he pauses dramatically. "I am," he says loftily, "what you made me!"
Obi-Wan can't process the condemnation.
He last saw him, his beautiful Anakin, savage with rage, spitting fire and fury at the universe on Mustafar's hot surface. This cold ravenous demon-droid coolly assigning blame is a wholly different creature.
I didn't do this, his brain wails. I couldn't have done. His lightsaber flicks off and he runs.
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
He had run that time too.
Year 7958
Coming out of the ship too late, he'd seen Anakin bending over Padmé's body lying inanimate on the ground. His aura had been wild and frantic, crying piteously and raging uncontrollably.
In confusion, he had not revealed himself to his former padawan. Anakin had held her for a time, before screaming his pain to the skies - leaving her there on the ground as he stumbled off into the glowing dark of the volcanic planet.
Obi-Wan had run out quickly to check her body, found her unconscious, breathing so shallowly she might as well have been entering the halls of the departed. Anakin's saber lay next to her on the ground. Clipping it to his belt and lifting her awkwardly, Obi-Wan had taken her back to the ship, silently, before Anakin returned. Unfortunately he was not as lucky as he might have been. As he came back to close the ramp, he froze, seeing Anakin in the distance.
Unfortunately, Anakin also saw him and his rage swallowed the sun.
"Go!" Obi-Wan had gasped at the little astromech through the comm, even as a vice grip lodged round his throat.
R2-D2 had taken off, while Obi-Wan fought the invisible bands round his throat, sinking to his knees as Anakin's voice hissed sibilantly in his head: I will find you, my treacherous Master, and you will rue the day you took her from me!
What treachery? Obi-Wan thought wildly. How is this my fault? What do you know?
Distance helped.
Anakin's grip lessened as they passed through the atmosphere, though his voice was still sharp as a knife in his skull: I will remember this, Obi-Wan. Your betrayal. Your cowardice. I will not forgive you for this.
His final blow had knocked Obi-Wan out for a while. He had come to to find C-3PO fussing and fluttering around uselessly, cursing his parts.
"Padmé?" he asked.
"Still comatose," the droid said apologetically. "I've used the medical monitor, but I have no programming for any more help. Are you all right, Master Kenobi?"
"I'm not sure," Obi-Wan whispered unexpectedly. "I suspect I have new neck ornamentation."
"It really is quite purple," Threepio stated. "I really am quite surprised at Master Ani being quite so violent. Did you do anything to upset him?"
"I see whose side you're on," Obi-Wan croaked, trying to stand. "I suppose the truth is yes, we both did a lot of things that upset him."
"Well I'm sure I don't know what you were thinking, making him angry," Threepio said primly. "And Artoo is being quite unreasonable and impolite. I'm sure we could sort this out if we just went back and talked to Master Ani."
"I think the time for talking might be done," Obi-Wan said, opening the 'fresher and looking in the reflector at his neck. "Threepio, would it harm Padmé if I used the medical monitor for a moment?"
His hand protectively on his belly, Obi-Wan checked his condition, slowly drinking the water the droid had brought him for his throat. Two steady beats pulsed faintly back at him, and he breathed a sigh of relief as the droid took it back to its mistress.
Obi-Wan went to the cockpit and sat down with the R2 unit, which was piloting its way through hyperspace toward Polis Massa.
*
The medical facilities at Polis Massa were very good. They were xenobiologists, after all.
They took Padmé in immediately. They had credits on the ship, small chips that cover big expenditures without trace. He didn't ask where they come from, pocketed a handful anyway. He signed her in under a pseudonym. Ami Naberrie, his wife-to-be.
She didn't wake up. The medical droid had apologised and asked him to step aside, where a Kallidahin medic had explained to him carefully that his wife appeared to be suffering from pseudocyesis and that it appeared to have been catered to with some particular hormone-inducing drug.
"But she went to a clinic in Coruscant!" Obi-Wan said, stunned. "She heard the foetal heart beat, felt her baby kick!"
"It is certain that the clinic lied," the Kallidahin nodded. "Fabricated evidence. And the rest would be mostly a psychosomatic effect of the drug. We do not see this particular manipulation much. Generally we hear from women whose bodies have given birth, and they deny ever being pregnant. It is a crime under section 47 of the Bodily Autonomy Act. Would you like me to report it?"
"Pardon?" Obi-Wan said blankly. "I mean, no - please don't ... yet. Stars, she was so looking forward to having his child!"
"Whose child?" the Kallidahin asked. "I thought this was your future wife."
"It's complicated," Obi-Wan waived the concern, brow furrowing. He can only think of one person who wanted to manipulate Anakin. That he would insert himself into his marriage and mess with his hopes though ... oh who was he kidding? Of course Palpatine would.
"Doctor," he said, in a small voice. "I hate to ask, but would you mind checking me over?"
Ben Olié, however, was indeed pregnant. The Kallidahin was confused but professional.
"It is twins, but perhaps you knew that? Almost six months along, perhaps, judging from their development, although they are small. Probably explains why you are not showing much though. If you don't mind my asking, what are your taxonomical rankings?"
Obi-Wan just looked perplexed. "My what?"
"Hmmmmm, your planet of origin?" the medic re-catalogued his request.
"Naboo," he lied. "Although I think my father's family came from Dorsarai in the Glythe sector." It's a place he knows some men can give birth. There is no way he wants a record of a Stewjoni male matching his description on file, especially linking it with Padmé's particular symptoms.
Obi-Wan doesn't stay long on Polis Massa.
Padmé wakes briefly, but her tears overflow when her situation is explained to her, and her grief is more than she can bear. She cries for the child she had prematurely loved, the cruel twisting knife of the monster who lured her husband away and gave her false hope. She cries for the hurts Anakin caused her, with his fear and rage and stupidity. She cries for the Jedi younglings, and Obi-Wan's lost family. She cries for the fallen Republic and her beloved Senate, and when she has no tears left, she tells Obi-Wan of her shame in being secretly married, of how she had really wanted a big family with love and laughter, and all she received were dashed hopes and broken dreams. She tells him of Luke and Leia, the names she had chosen, ready for her little one's emergence into this world. And she cries again as he folds her in his arms and tells her she's a good person and doesn't deserve this pain.
He doesn't know how to tell her of the night he provided comfort to her broken, raging husband when Ahsoka left after her trauma. Cannot find the words to say that her husband's seed bloomed twice in his womb. How could he do so? The very thought was cruelty. And so he tells her of how much Anakin loved her. He holds her in his arms as she falls asleep, talking of all the wonderful good things Anakin did for the galaxy, for fairness, for love. Shares his memories of his padawan's buoyant effusiveness, and explains that his heart was just too big for the Jedi Order; that Anakin loved too much and too hard, and that he too would have loved a big family, filled with love and laughter. That he was sorry. He was so so sorry.
When the beeping started, he froze as the droids came over rapidly, allowed them to take Padmé from his arms and help her to breathe.
They told him afterward that there was no medical reason why she had died. She had just given up on wanting to live.
He doesn't know how to process that.
Numb, he borrowed her ship and took her body back to Naboo in secret. Then he hitched a ride on a carrier after that, resigning himself to discomfort as he travelled. He took the droids with him; they were as much Anakin's as Padmé's, after all.
And then he disappeared.
*
Obi-Wan arrived on Alderaan perhaps two years later with his babes. He had weaned them by then, though they were still small.
Breha and Bail thought they knew the children's parentage, scolded him for trying to do it all alone, agreed to take Leia and adopt her, promised to love and protect her always. It is all he ever wanted for Anakin's children. He took the commlink Bail gave him, hid it away; he won't use it, he thought, it's just a lifeline.
He took Luke to Anakin's family. Owen and Beru weren't able to have children of their own. He could see they were overwhelmed with the gift he gave them, already in love with Anakin's son.
He didn't feel guilty about taking the names Padmé wanted for her children. In a strange way, he felt like he was honouring her with his choice.
He moved into a cave on Tatooine, instantly gaining a reputation for weirdness he neither wanted or needed. It was fair though, for he had forgotten the art of polite conversation, forgotten how to live well. He lived like a hermit, renouncing all worldly things. The loss of the Jedi Order weighed on him, and he was glad in some ways that Anakin's children weren't burdened by that, by his misery and guilt. He watched over Luke from afar, resigning himself to monotony, to drudgery.
He was not running anymore, instead he slowly stagnated.
He could not tell which was worse. Both options were uncivilised.
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Year 7968
Vader catches him, of course. He's inevitable.
He taunts him.
His own strength is nothing against Vader's. He can't hold his saber against the Sith. Vader casually swipes at him with his Sith blade one-handed, overpowering him easily. Pushes him away with the Force so hard that he skids twenty feet along the ground before toppling. Vader's strength comes from a place of hatred, but Obi-Wan's body doesn't know that. As he climbs to his feet, his asscheeks slide against each other, slick easing the way. He is lucky that Vader is masked, he knows; his body had a weird sense of timing and appropriateness. He slices through a power line and runs, not hanging around to watch the cloud that immediately steams into the air.
But he runs into a dead end.
He only realises his mistake when a cartload of whatever mineral they mine here scatters on the ground behind him and he's caught in Vader's grasp, lifted into the air as he struggles to breathe.
"Now you will suffer, Obi-Wan," Vader enunciates bitterly, lighting the mineral on fire with his saber and angling Obi-Wan over it. He's not going to ... oh kark, he is ...
Vader tosses him down into the burning fuel and drags him across the ground. "Your suffering has only just begun," he bites out.
Obi-Wan can't breathe, can't think. His body is given over to feeling. Flames lick at his face and Vader slides into their bond while he's distracted with pain, ravaging his mind. He can't fight him, can't blot out the triumphal glee that floods through the bond at having Obi-Wan thus incapacitated. A thought not his own slides through their bond, he owes the Inquisitor, for Vader is very pleased right now. And then there is ice in his veins: Vader, picking at his memories and finding Tala, Haja, Daiyu, Anakin's daughter - he freezes completely.
Obi-Wan wails into the Force. No! This was not my bargain!
The Force extinguishes the flames as if they never were, denying the fuel oxygen.
Vader growls at a stormtrooper, "Bring him to me."
All hell breaks loose suddenly. Blasters are fired. Someone drags him from the still-hot fuel, checking his breathing, patting his clothing down to extinguish embers. It hurts. He cannot tell where his clothing ends and he begins, his skin still burning.
The fire erupts again to his right, and he flinches, gasping for breath as his body goes into shock. His eyes are open, but he registers nothing except pain - pain as someone picks him up, puts him down, pulls his clothing off, or are they cutting? He cannot tell, delirious with unnatural fever. And then nothing. Nothing at all.
*
Bacta causes weird dreams, or so they say.
Obi-Wan finds Vader in his mind while he's in the tank. His body isn't healing the way it ought, suffering because his mind is engaged in fighting off Vader's probing search. He doesn't know how long he's in there, but the first thing out of his mouth as he emerges is, "Where's Leia?"
Where is Anakin's daughter?
*
An impromptu rescue, some ugly truths and the loss of a pilot are pulled off in a few hours.
His saber is beginning to feel more natural in his hand now; little flourishes return with extended use. His fear of using the Force is secondary to saving Anakin's daughter; with every little use, it becomes easier, the Force singing through his veins. He won't be able to give it up a second time.
It also helps that Anakin's daughter is glad to see him and so very thankful. Her complete trust and open affection restores his self-respect. While he cannot help but count the lives he has taken to get her to safety, the growing ease with which he did it is bringing back a certain recklessness.
They have awoken General Kenobi. They might not be pleased that they have.
*
He cannot promise Anakin's daughter that he will see her again. He can only promise to try. Tala's death has hit him harder than he expected, for she was a good person in a dark time. It hurts that he cannot leave Anakin's daughter with someone who would fight to the death for her. It's rather unreasonable, he tells himself, to assume the others won't die trying also. Maybe Haja and Roken deserve the same trust. He cannot give it though, these are dark times, after all.
He departs the refugee ship in a drop ship, trusting in Anakin's inability to let him go to allow the rebels a chance.
He tells the Force he trusts it to watch over Anakin's daughter, and he really does want it to be true. He cannot let himself think about Anakin's son, unwatched over these last couple of weeks. He tries to tell himself that he trusts Owen and Beru, but he hardly knows them, if he is honest.
The darkness on the little moon he has chosen is quite depressing, as if being chased all over Mapuzo by Vader in the dark wasn't enough. Why hadn't he flown to the other side? At least it would have been light. He has no answer for himself. Perhaps this is the end, he muses fatalistically. Perhaps he really ought to have tried contacting Qui-Gon. It's a bit late now, though - Vader's shuttle is flying in.
*
He'd like to say that he waited patiently, meditating, but mostly he was freaking out as slick soaked his ass. Dealing with inappropriate horniness was not a course provided by the Jedi, and although he'd been dealing with it since Anakin developed abs at fourteen, it was quite something else to be turned on by nothing more than his power. The 'fresher helps, slightly, and he feels drier and more able to face his former padawan as he steps out into the darkness and waits.
The Lambda class shuttle opens with a hiss of hydraulics as the seals release.
Darth Vader strides out to meet him, stopping some distance away.
It hardly matters, his presence is a wound in the Force, ice choking the throat and heaviness in the air.
"Have you come to destroy me, Obi-Wan?" Vader demands.
I was here first, Obi-Wan's brain mutters. I should be asking the questions. Obi-Wan squashes its babble ruthlessly and looks at the Sith. Vader stands aggressively, holding his saber hilt, a black hole of negative emotion on an already dark moon.
"Well?" Vader presses, irritation making his voice harsher.
Obi-Wan hesitates, hearing an echo in the Force. He ignores it. "Uh, probably not," he says honestly.
"I felt sure you were going to Do what you must," Vader remarks.
"You heard that too?" Obi-Wan mutters. "I mean, I probably will do what I must, Anakin. You do keep making it hard for me not to."
An angry snarl rolls on the air. "I make it hard for you?" Vader hisses, lightsaber igniting, striding forward.
Their blades kiss in the dark, blindingly bright, and then they're whirling, sabers too fast to process. Obi-Wan bends and sways, his saber curving and deflecting, only to come back and challenge again and again. Vader, strong and destructive, wielding his saber with crushing blows of fantastic strength and speed. For a tall man, he is fast and dextrous, though his breathing comes through laboured and wheezy.
It's like a dance. Obi-Wan remembers the steps more and more as he parries and ripostes, Vader smashing his saber down angrily, swiping it this way and that, an angry krayt in a temper. There is a flow between them though, and sometimes they fall into it naturally - Vader stops actively trying to kill him and they just exist in the movements, a perfect give and take of form and function.
Is it wrong to admit that he is loving this? It is reckless and insane, but it's so Anakin that his heart sings a little.
When the Force blasts him off his feet, he wonders if perhaps he was projecting as he tumbles backwards.
He reaches into the Force for a rock tower, pulls it sideways until gravity assists.
"Your strength returns," Vader says, mockingly redirecting it with a gesture. "Yet the weakness remains, and that is why you will always LOSE!"
The Sith reaches down and cracks the earth with a thought. The earth crumbles at his whim, and Obi-Wan disappears down into the hole he'd created as Vader piles a ton of rubble on his head.
He creates a bubble of safety around himself as the rocks are pushed deliberately down on him, the Force doing nothing about the dust and small particles that make it hard to breathe. Vader's rage is incandescent above, his voice reverberating through the ground like a malicious echo. He only hears the cadence, notes the mocking Master at the end of it.
He had been right, Vader does make it very hard for Obi-Wan to not react. If the choice is die or not, he will probably always choose not. Maybe one day, when he is serene and all-knowing, he can take a leaf out of Master Zao's book and not do what he must. In the meantime, however, he would like to breathe.
He is battered by Vader's voice, his accusations in his memory. "I am what you made me," stands out. He shakes his head. What Obi-Wan had made? His brain helpfully supplies pictures of Anakin's children, Anakin's son's happy childhood being a kid on Tatooine, Anakin's daughter's old-soul eyes as she takes his hand in a gesture of absolute loving trust. He thinks of her reasons for that - the dangers they'd wormed their way out of, the close calls, the adrenaline high of saving each other. Anakin's daughter gave him the Force back and he will never be ungrateful. In his own way, Vader helped too.
He has people to live for, people he would sacrifice himself for. The children they'd made, they'd made together, and Vader, the reckless, angry fool, could do with a wake-up call.
The Force sings in his veins as he blasts Vader's rockpile into the air and scrambles upward, lighter than air.
The smug cloud of wrath that Vader envelops himself in is easy to track, even when the smugness leeches out, leaving him merely wrathful.
They meet again in combat, both skilled duelists, the ebb and flow of their fight seamless and undaunted. Vader fights with aggression, they way he always has, a battering, relentless strength like the towering rocks they fight between. Obi-Wan bends and flows like water, parries the devastating blows with a smooth counter-strike, melting away into a turn and dancing into his padawan's strike zone again, taunting, testing, always watching. The Force zings in the air between them, and Obi-Wan ignores the slick he can feel moistening his ass, because this fight ... he feels like a young man again.
Vader was always enraged by Soresu evasions, but mixed with Makashi-Shien? Shielding with unexpected Shii Cho in the middle of an Ataru combination? Obi-Wan gets the impression that Vader loves it too. He's blocking with the Force, stars he's mastered it so well. Obi-Wan's pride in his padawan is infinite as he counters every one of Obi-Wan's strikes, driven on a journey down memory lane as Obi-Wan takes them through training sequences, checking Vader's wilder impulses to stymie his master with a missing limb, flowing easily into more and more combinations, taking the time to flourish his saber, because what is combat, if not an opportunity to flex? He loves duelling. He loves duelling with Anakin. There's a thin line between rage and sorrow, when he thinks about what Palpatine has done.
Eventually though, Obi-Wan pushes Vader back with the Force, embraces the moon's desire to be part of their dance and lifts every rock in the vicinity, glorying in his freedom to do it, in the power that flows so easily through his hands.
Vader rolls to a crouch, slowly, watching the display warily.
"Are you going to take that suit off, or do I have to cut if off you?" Obi-Wan calls, striding forward.
Vader sputters something unintelligible, cursing him probably.
"Take that kriffing mask off, Anakin! How the kark do you cope, trapped behind that thing daily?"
Icy cold freezes his marrow and he can feel Vader's eyes narrow to slits.
"Is it a mask or a prison?" Obi-Wan wonders. "Or merely a shield, now?"
The Force shudders.
"Stop hiding, padawan, " he says, more gently now, still venturing closer to the angry storm of emotion that is Anakin Skywalker. "What's done is done. Walk a different path."
"You don't know," Vader says harshly. "You don't know the power of the dark side. I must obey my Master."
Obi-Wan cocks his head.
"Why?" he asks. "You revelled in disobeying almost everything I ever said once you hit sixteen. Why does he get your loyalty, your obedience, your love?"
A blast of unfettered hate shoots into the universe; there is no end to it. "I do not love him."
"Anakin," Obi-Wan gets close enough to put his hand on his armoured shoulder. It's like touching a sleeping gundark; his heart flutters. "I know you did, once. His betrayal of your trust -"
"He's not the only one who did that, is he?" Vader spits bitterly.
"We all made mistakes," Obi-Wan says quietly. "I have my own regrets."
"Rako Hardeen?" Anakin growls. "Ahsoka?"
Obi-Wan grimaces. "Among other things," he nods. "But there is a difference, Anakin. We did those things accidentally or in ignorance, not malice. Palpatine," a shudder goes through him. "Palpatine did it all with malice aforethought. His every move was to corrupt and twist and destroy." He glances down at his former padawan, cloaked in fearsome armour like a machine. "And he took you, my fearless one. He twisted you until you could no longer see up from down, right from left. He made you afraid," he hisses fiercely, "and then he exploited that fear. Took your trust and bound you with it. My love, he betrayed you with his eyes wide open."
Vader sways toward him as if hynotised. Obi-Wan isn't fool enough to think it's because he's saying anything except ravenous hatred for the Emperor.
"Let me help you," he begs. "Let me loosen the chains round your neck. If you must obey a master, why must it be him?"
He can't take much more of this. He kneels in front of this creature of swirling darkness and fathomless rage, so unsettling, so familiar, puts his hand up to cup his face.
"Take your mask off, dear one," Obi-Wan whispers. "Take a first step into a larger world."
A click.
A hiss of air releasing.
Vader lifts the helmet clean off his head.
Obi-Wan releases the breath he hadn't known he was holding.
Anakin's hair is dark, matted with sweat against his head. He can't tell how long it is. His skin, far from the golden sunkissed colour he's used to, is sallow and dull. A light sheen of sweat covers his face, light stubble covers his jaw. He breathes deeply, eyes on the ground as if defeated.
Obi-Wan's lip curls in amusement at his stubbornness, seeing his sullen padawan in the scene before him. Already his hand is reaching for his chin, tilts it up and looks into malicious yellow eyes.
"There you are," he murmurs. "Hello dearheart."
Vader allows him this liberty for a long moment, lets him bestow a kiss on his forehead like he's being knighted. Watches every little reaction Obi-Wan makes.
"You going to put those rocks down anytime soon?" Vader drawls in Anakin's voice. "Or is it time to move on to round two?"
"Oh," Obi-Wan twists, turns his back on Vader to look at the spectacle. "I suppose I shou-"
It's a mistake.
Vader pulls him backward into his chest with his mechanical arm, his other hand, gloved, comes up to massage his throat with a vice-like grip. Anakin's dear voice low and soft in his ear while he stops him from speaking. "Hello there, Master."
It is unbearably hot.
Obi-Wan quivers in his arms, a delightful frisson of movement as he moans. "I suppose that's one way you could make it up to me," Vader muses aloud. "After all, you gave it up once before, trying to ease your conscience."
Indignant spluttering does not encourage Vader to let him speak.
"I can smell you, Master," he murmurs. "Is that why you wanted the helmet off? It's not quite the confrontation I was anticipating."
Obi-Wan throws a boulder at him in outrage.
Vader laughs, catches it and tosses it aside.
Obi-Wan flushes hot at the casual display of power. His ass leaks more slick.
"But," Vader steers the conversation back where he wants it. "Let's talk about Padmé, shall we?"
Obi-Wan doesn't want to have the conversation like this, not with Vader's hand at his throat. He doesn't get a chance to speak though, because a moment later the lights go out.
And all his rocks fall.
*
When he awakens, it's in a chair. He's restrained in every conceivable way. His arms don't move, neither do his legs, pads either side of his head prevent him turning, not that he can see anyway. He is blindfolded, and there's a flat tongue depressor in his mouth, strapped there by something tight round his head. Low-level darksider energy permeates the air. It tastes metallic. Salty. Evil.
Reaching out with the Force, he can feel that Anakin is there, Vader, he should say. Tightly coiled rage is spitting fire into the Force and then suddenly it magnifies. Obi-Wan concentrates on breathing and calming his nerves. Is it weird that he's doing it in sync with Vader's modulated breathing through his mask?
"You seem agitated ... my friend," says the familiar patronising voice of the only person he's ever hated.
"He will not evade me again," Vader states. Accurately, as it turns out.
"I wonder if your thoughts are ... clear ... on this, Lord Vader," the Emperor says softly, with the merest hint of a threat. "Perhaps your feelings for your old master have left you weakened. If your past cannot be overcome -"
"Kenobi means nothing," Vader spits out, halting the monologue the same way he used to interrupt Obi-Wan mid-lecture. "I serve only you, my Master."
The vile hatred and suffocating rage do not dissipate as the connection is cut.
Obi-Wan sits and listens to Vader's breathing with a racing heart. There are only two ways this next confrontation are going to go, and judging from this preamble, it's not looking good for him. He reaches out to find calm, and weirdly finds solace in the repetitive inhalation and exhalation of Vader's suit. Well ... breathing is calming, he tells himself.
It's only as he sits here, awake and totally incapacitated, that he begins to wonder how long it's been. His stomach thinks his throat's been cut, and the warm, stale taste of his mouth is gross. He wants water, and to stretch, and kark it all, a bath. He feels like he's sitting in a wet patch, and flushes shamefully as he realises it might not actually be piss. Stars, it's probably not piss at all.
He refuses to think about it, deliberately focusing elsewhere until once again he loses himself in the rhythmic breathing.
It says something for his awareness that Vader's glove massaging his jaw and removing the gag is the first hint he has that Vader has moved.
"I couldn't trust you'd be particularly quiet," Vader says drily, undoing straps. "With your rebellious anti-Empire rhetoric."
"That's fair," Obi-Wan rasps. "Would you like to hear some now?"
"What I want," Vader says silkily, and how he manages that is a mystery. "Is for you to explain to me, in excruciating detail, where you took my pregnant wife and why the hell I found her tomb, dating her death barely a week after YOU TOOK HER FROM ME!"
*
Sight returns to Obi-Wan without too much drama. Clearly, when one has been blindfolded, one ought always to wake up in Sith palaces with muted lighting and gentle red accents. Apparently though, Vader is unfamiliar with the hospitality programme and he doesn't get offered a drink.
"I thought you'd killed her," Obi-Wan admits, coughing. "When I went to check, she was alive. You were ... unstable. I thought it would be best to get her to a doctor."
"Where?" Vader says harshly.
Obi-Wan suddenly realises he cannot say. Cannot give up the clinic. If he does, Vader will know everything.
"Yes," Vader says. "He will."
Obi-Wan stares at him in horror, frantically checking his shields. It is too late. Vader is in his mind. Again. Their training bond, never severed, ensures his mind doesn't even treat him as a stranger.
Vader removes his helmet and gloves quietly and curls his left hand round Obi-Wan's throat.
"Yes, my Master," he purrs as Obi-Wan swallows, his throat apple struggling against Vader's thumb. "The time for truth is now. You already gave up Anakin's daughter. Did you think I had forgotten? Why do you think I let that pathetic transport limp away from us? The Grand Inquisitor was quite ... disturbed by my generosity."
"Oh no," Obi-Wan says involuntarily. Stars, what a mess. His own sentimentality has gotten him into this, foolishly believing Anakin would never find out, would never know. "I don't-"
"You are an accomplished liar, Obi-Wan," Vader stops him, releases his bonds with the Force and lifts him with it, walking him across the room. "And I am being particularly patient and longsuffering because you have clearly cared for her well-being, but do not mistake my patience for stupidity."
Obi-Wan crashes down on a long, wide table, pressed into the metal surface by the Force.
"I am waiting."
Obi-Wan flees into his mind, wondering how to answer Vader. There's every possibility that the workers who dealt with them won't be working there any more. The question is, does he already know? Is this a test?
The truth is that Anakin deserves to know. Anakin deserves some peace of mind. His padawan has been lied to and manipulated since before he left Tatooine ... Obi-Wan swallows nervously. He already knows about Anakin's daughter, his mind reminds him.
"We went to the research base on Polis Massa," he says uncomfortably.
Vader stares at him, unblinking with his yellow eyes. Obi-Wan has the sudden sickening feeling that those were not his thoughts.
Abtuptly Vader whirls, helmet and gloves on in seconds. "Ready my ship," he barks into a comm.
Vader hauls him along unceremoniously through his castle, down to the ship, in Force-suppressing cuffs, a black sack over his head.
Several troopers' heads turn as he is marched along, Vader's hand on the grip between the cuffs. It looks like overkill. It is. But who dares question the vagaries of Darth Vader?
Obi-Wan is surprised when they commandeer a ship on a small supply moon, and Anakin changes out of Vader's suit. He wonders how many times he has done that in the last ten years. Guesses he can count the number on one digit.
*
Polis Massa looks the same as it did ten years ago.
Unfortunately, the same medical staff are in the building and they recognise him immediately as he enters, Vader a tall shadow at his side.
"Ben Olié!" one of the Kallidahin says immediately. "I am Selif Xam, lead practitioner. How are your children?"
Vader's hand tightens on Obi-Wan's arm painfully. He tries to ignore it. "They - they are doing well," he says trying not to wince. "This is their father. He wanted to see where ... Ami died."
"Actually," Vader clarifies, still gripping Obi-Wan tightly. "I am here to find out how ... Ami died."
Obi-Wan feels like he's standing at a precipice. His heart flutters wildly in his chest.
The Kallidahin looks at him concernedly. "Are you alright, there, Ben?"
Vader has the gall to answer for him, using the moment to slide his metal arm around his waist and pull him into his side. "Ben's been a little on edge," Vader confides, kissing his temple. "It's been a difficult time, and he's just been going through the wringer trying to give me the whole story."
Stars, it wasn't even untrue. Ben nods miserably.
Selif Xam looks at the two of them and nods. "You did say your relationship was complicated," he remarks to Obi-Wan conversationally. "Very well. We shall do our best. Come this way, you may watch the recordings while we make a copy of the relevant documents."
There were recordings? Obi-Wan tries to wriggle out of Vader's hold, to no avail.
You will watch them with me, my Master, Vader holds him still. And then we will see whether or not you should have run faster when you had the chance.
*
Obi-Wan would very much like to have edited what Vader saw. He wasn't expecting the recordings to continue on, documenting his own consultation. He had forgotten the order things had occurred in.
Vader pulls him fully onto his lap when he finds out his children are Obi-Wan's, holds him close as Obi-Wan trembles through Padmé's final moments, silent tears rolling down his cheeks. By contrast, Vader looks like he's made of stone.
The only thing Vader says to Xam is, "I need digital copies of these recordings."
It is only after receiving them that he escorts Obi-Wan back to their ship, still holding him firmly.
*
"You meant it," Vader says, before they take off. "All of it."
Obi-Wan, small and vulnerable where Vader set him down in the co-pilot's seat, nods.
"Where are my children?" Vader asks casually.
He can not.
"You cannot be serious," Obi-Wan blurts out. "You know what the Empire does to Force sensitives! Do you think they would be safe if he knew of them?"
"That is not what I asked, Obi-Wan," Vader says reasonably. "Just because you bore them does not mean you have exclusive rights."
It would be so fair, so reasonable. If it were not for the Empire.
You didn't even know you had children, a week ago, his traitorous mind grumbles.
"You really want to use that argument?" Vader snaps. "I also didn't know you could get pregnant. Or that my wife wasn't! I don't recall you pulling out of missions or telling me before you went to face Grievous. I offered to go with you!"
That last mission.
Kriff. He'd wanted Anakin to come along, had been told in no uncertain terms that Anakin had another task. Would it all be different if he had?
I never thought I would actually find him, he says mutely. There were so many false reports...
"And then Order Sixty-six," Anakin sighs. "I watched Cody's feed for you. You plummeted a hell of a drop after they shot your varactyl."
"How lovely," Obi-Wan bites out. "Did you watch all our brothers and sisters dying, or was I special?"
Vader gives him a look that drips venom. "You know the answer to that, Obi-Wan."
He doesn't, but suddenly he doesn't want the answer. Anakin's role in the fall of the Republic, unpublicised, was instrumental. Without him, it's uncertain whether it would have happened at all. Kark, did he watch them all die? Did he even allow himself an emotional response?
"I'll tell you everything you want to know," Vader says. "Now answer my question, Obi-Wan. Where are our children?"
It's an unfair question.
Since he gave them up, Obi-Wan has thought of them as Anakin's children. It's a level of separation he has needed to survive without them.
"You know," he says suddenly, fear gripping his heart. "How do you know? Oh Anakin, please, please don't! Don't!"
He cannot help himself, he throws himself at the man's feet. "Please, please. Not that!"
Vader strokes his face with his left hand, infinitely gentle. "What, exactly, do you think I am going to do?" he asks. "Give my children to that monster?"
Since that's exactly what Obi-Wan thought, he trembles under Vader's fingertips.
"No," Vader says distantly. "I was testing your capacity to be honest with me. I already know the boy is on Tatooine, the girl with Organa on Alderaan."
"H-how?" Obi-Wan asks, dumbfounded. "Th-that Inquisitor woman?"
"The Third Sister exceeded her usefulness and will not be bothering anyone again." Vader pulls out a broken communicator he recognises, switches it on. Bail appears clearly; he remembers the man out of his mind with worry and grief. "... learned of the children? ... Tatooine ... Owen ... help ... boy."
Oh Kriff, Bail. The man is too honest. But for himself he cannot be. When was the last time he trusted anyone?
"I'm sorry," he says blankly. He slumps, his forehead on Vader's thigh. He doesn't move until they land, and even then, only when Vader moves him.
*
He wakes to find himself in Vader's bed. He's still fully clothed, still cuffed. Not generally something he's enjoyed.
"Liar," Vader says, behind him, palming his damp ass.
It's an accurate assessment. Still, it's been a long time since anyone was uncivilised enough to call him out on it.
Vader allows him a bath, food and rich tea. Then he fucks him on the table.
Obi-Wan, untouched since Anakin crowded him against the door of their shared chambers and exorcised his anger with the High Council by fucking its newest member, melts at his touch. He has loved Anakin Skywalker since he became his padawan; he cannot help himself.
Anakin gorges himself in Obi-Wan's body, still fertile, still his for the taking. So he takes, and takes, because Sidious promises and never delivers. And Obi-Wan smiles and gives and gives, and the dichotomy is stark.
"I don't think it has to be him," Vader says one day. "I think it should be you."
"Of course it should be me," Obi-Wan says, showering him with kisses.
It's not like Vader is in love with him, Obi-Wan knows that.
Their relationship is complicated.
Vader has forgotten how to love.
He knows how to hate, though. And together they plan and scheme and prepare, because Palpatine being alive threatens their children, born and unborn.
Obi-Wan didn't know he could hate until he met Palpatine. Every story Vader shares feeds the beast that lurks in Obi-Wan's heart. Contrariwise, every kindness Obi-Wan shows Vader tames his savagery and brings him a little more peace. Together, they might even balance each other out.
Vader cannot ever be that carefree boy again, but he can be the man Obi-Wan needs him to be.
Civilised, mostly.
*
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