Chapter Text
“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
-When Harry Met Sally
“I literally do not understand why we aren’t just taking that one,” Anakin said, pointing at one of the shuttle transports on the landing pad beside the one they were waiting to board. “Or that one.”
Obi-Wan sighed. “Because it belongs to someone. Because we’re still dressed as Jedi. Because this commuter shuttle is inexpensive and will get us as far as Scarif in the Abrion sector, and from there we can easily barter passage to Rishi and on to Kamino. How many more reasons do you need?”
Anakin pouted. “That one’s prettier.”
“And the owner knows it, or else they wouldn’t have put an infraction restraint on the landing gear,” Ahsoka said, getting up on her tiptoes to look over Anakin’s shoulder at the ship he was mooning over.
“Good thing I had you spend two weeks learning how…to…” Anakin realized Obi-Wan was fixing him with a withering glare. “Leave infraction restraints alone, because they are always there for totally useful and legitimate reasons.”
Ahsoka snorted as the line moved forward a few steps. Obi-Wan distributed their tickets, which he’d purchased from the window at the station with the little bit of credits he and Anakin had managed to cobble together from the pockets of their robes while Ahsoka used the ‘fresher.
“Wow, I finally graduated to Adult Sentient!” Ahsoka enthused, looking at her ticket. “Thanks, Obi-Wan!” Anakin, who generally tried to avoid any conversation where he had to admit Ahsoka was no longer fourteen, made an unhappy growling noise deep in his throat.
“You’re welcome, my dear,” Obi-Wan told her mildly, just to piss Anakin off, and it worked, too, because the next time the queue moved up, Anakin scowled and stalked ahead, evidently deciding to pretend he hadn’t met either of his companions before.
BEEP BEEP BEEP
“Oh, fuck,” Anakin sighed, and he stopped walking.
“Excuse me, sir,” the RX droid stationed at the base of the shuttle gangplank said. “You’re going to have to remove your weapon.”
“No, I don’t,” Anakin shot back.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the droid continued. “You cannot board a commercial flight with your weapon.”
“It’s part of my religion.”
“If you wish to discuss this with my supervisor, I will gladly book you on tomorrow’s flight.”
Anakin groaned. “Fine.” The droid handed him a key card, and Anakin slipped it into the lockbox in front of him and disengaged the clasps before opening the lid. He unclipped his lightsaber from his belt and tossed it in. From behind him, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan did the same. Artoo beeped something in Binary.
“No; I didn’t mean you, sir,” the RX droid told him politely. Artoo trilled happily and went around Anakin and rolled up the ramp, apparently taking this as tacit permission to board the shuttle without them.
Anakin shut the lid with far more aggression than necessary and pulled the key card back out. “This travels with us on the ship, right?” he asked the RX, gesturing to the box.
“Of course, sir,” the droid said, but it was already busy checking in the next family in line and wasn’t paying him much attention.
“The RX series were meant to be pilots, you know,” Anakin grumbled as they headed up the inclined entranceway, following the path Artoo had taken. “It’s a waste to have him doing port security.”
“Maybe that one’s a really bad pilot,” Ahsoka said. Artoo swiveled his head and beeped a question.
“Yeah, sure. Knock yourself out. Just don’t forget to get off with us at Scarif,” Anakin reminded him, and he shot forward, bumping into legs and lower appendages as he went to find the droid storage compartment.
They joined the backlog of passengers trying to find their assigned seats and space to stow their (non-weaponized) belongings. As none of the three of them had brought any luggage with them, that wasn’t a concern, but Obi-Wan did catch Anakin looking rapidly between his ticket and the numbers printed on the bulkheads above the seats.
“What?” Obi-Wan asked.
Anakin ignored him. “What seat did you get?” he asked Ahsoka, who had filed in behind him.
She looked at her ticket. “21 dorn.”
“Master?” Anakin asked, looking at him over Ahsoka’s head.
“14 aurek,” Obi-Wan read off.
Anakin groaned. “Okay, next time we fly commercial, maybe let me buy the tickets, all right?”
“Wait,” Ahsoka said, putting up her hands. “You mean we’re not sitting together? That can’t be right.”
“It is if you just buy any old – wait a second. You didn’t seat us separately on purpose, did you?” Anakin glared in Obi-Wan’s direction.
“No!” Obi-Wan protested.
“You sure you’re not trying to get rid of us?” Ahsoka teased.
“Of course I am, but you think I would do it in such blatant fashion?” Obi-Wan teased back. “I can’t even escape from you both in here. What am I going to do, jump out the airlock?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Anakin snorted. Then he turned to a Pantoran woman sitting on the aisle of row eleven. “Pardon me, ma’am, but my father made an error booking our tickets and our family has ended up in three different rows. Do you think I could swap seats with you?”
“Father,” Obi-Wan huffed indignantly under his breath, as the Pantoran said she was happy to move so long as she got to remain in an aisle seat, and then Anakin was off, asking the Rodian couple in row fourteen if they’d agree to a double swap, and ten minutes later Obi-Wan somehow ended up with a ticket for 16 cresh shoved into his hands. “I didn’t think this was one of our original rows,” he said, as Ahsoka scooted past him to take the window seat.
“It wasn’t,” Anakin groused. He flopped down next to Ahsoka. “Now sit down, Dad, before someone else tries to do what I just did and we all get moved again.”
Obi-Wan hurriedly sat down on the aisle seat. No sooner had he located the restraining device, however, than Ahsoka leaned around Anakin, who was gazing out the window, and said, “Master? I’m hungry. Can you get us something to eat?”
“Ooh, yeah, I’m hungry, too,” Anakin echoed, not taking his eyes off the window.
Obi-Wan pictured the few credits he had left over in his pocket after buying the tickets quickly evaporating. “After we’re in the air and safely on our way I’ll head over to the dining car and see what they have, all right?” he asked, hoping this response would tide them over. With any luck they would forget about it entirely.
“Okay,” Ahsoka said, and sat back in her seat. Obi-Wan caught himself glancing up and down the aisles in front and in back of them, watching and listening for any danger. They weren’t supposed to be experiencing any danger on this voyage, but old habits died hard.
“Feels weird to be up here in the passenger bay and not down there directing traffic,” Ahsoka continued, pointing out the window. Droids were loading the larger pieces of luggage into the storage compartments below their seats, accessible from the outside of the shuttle.
“Or in the cockpit,” Anakin said.
“Mm-hmm,” Obi-Wan agreed. He closed his eyes and let his head tip back and rest against the seat, his hands folded in his lap. He tried very hard to convince himself that they were safe, there was nothing he needed to be vigilant about right now and that the Force would warn him if there was, and that it was safe for him to relax. Or, if that didn’t work, he wanted to at least pretend it was true.
“I’m sorry Padmé wouldn’t come with us, Skyguy,” he heard Ahsoka say.
Anakin made a low noise in his throat. “Well, at least I know she’ll be safe. As a candidate to the chancellorship, she has to consent to around-the-clock protection. And I guess…” He sighed. “I guess, in the end, that’s really all I ever wanted for her. To know that she’s safe. Even if I’m not the one who’s always going to be there to protect her.”
“You said…” Ahsoka’s voice sounded small and contemplative. “You said you aren’t always going to be around to protect me, either, and that’s why you taught me how to protect myself.”
“And he would be correct,” Obi-Wan cut in, without opening his eyes. “Forever depending on another person, no matter how competent they are, leaves you vulnerable. Learning to rely on yourself, your abilities, and your own connection to the Force is much more valuable.”
“Also, Padmé’s a really good shot,” Anakin added. “I don’t have to worry about” –
He paused as the engine thrusters started up and the whole shuttle shook. Obi-Wan cracked one eye open to look out the window. They had taken off and were starting to climb. He closed his eye again as he felt the landing gear retract.
“She’ll be okay,” Anakin said finally, once they were airborne.
“Can we talk, then, about the cricking bantha in the room? Because” –
“Language, please,” Obi-Wan chided reflexively. Both Ahsoka and Anakin ignored him.
“What bantha?”
“Rex says you guys weren’t just…doing it,” Ahsoka said, and Anakin groaned, presumably at her choice of words, “but that you actually got married, too.”
“Any other secrets, of mine, that Captain Rex felt free to share?” Anakin snarked.
“Mm…” Ahsoka thought about it. “No. Not that I can recall. Just the one. I mean, were you undercover, or on a secret mission, or something?”
“No; just really horny,” Anakin said, sounding wistful.
“Gross. Okay, so, that’s it, then? No more big secrets?”
“Well.” Anakin sounded uncomfortable and shifted in his seat; Obi-Wan could feel Anakin’s arm bumping against his. “There is kind of one thing.”
“You have two wives?” Ahsoka teased.
“No, Snips,” Anakin snapped. “Shut up. It’s not something to joke around about. It’s…I…” He took a deep breath. “Okay, so, you know how I’m from Tatooine?”
“And I’m from Shili,” Ahsoka deadpanned. “That’s a terrible secret, Master. I already knew where you’re from. We’ve been there.”
“Right, but it’s not the where so much as the…how.”
“I know you and your mother were sold into slavery,” Ahsoka said softly, all traces of mirth gone from her voice.
“But I never told you how she died.”
There was a long pause. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I always just assumed you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t,” Anakin snorted. “But you asked about secrets, so…” He took another deep breath. “When Qui-Gon took me off Tatooine, we left my mother behind. She eventually was sold to a moisture farmer named Cliegg Lars, who…well, he says they fell in love and got married. She lived with him and his family until she was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by some local raiders.”
“Oh, Force,” Ahsoka breathed. “Why?”
“Honestly, I still don’t know why,” Anakin admitted, and he sounded exhausted. “Because that’s just what Tuskens do, on Tatooine. Generations of hate have just…built up, and they take it out on anyone or anything they can find. Even if they’re an easy target who never hurt anyone or anything in her entire life.”
Obi-Wan assumed the Tuskens would have probably told this story much differently, but now was certainly not the time to bring that up with Anakin. (It might never be the time.)
“I’d been having these…visions,” Anakin continued. “Kind of…actually, kind of like the ones I’ve been having about Padmé dying, lately.” He seemed surprised, like this was the first time he’d made that connection. “Nothing solid, just…pain, and flashes of my mother. A lot of screaming.” He shivered – Obi-Wan could feel it against his side. “Padmé went with me to Tatooine. We weren’t supposed to leave Naboo, but…well.” Obi-Wan could hear the wry smile in his voice. “We weren’t supposed to go to Geonosis, either.”
“And an admirable job you two did of that one, too,” Obi-Wan snarked.
Anakin ignored him and pressed on. “I found my mom. They’d been searching for weeks, at that point. They weren’t going to find her. She’d have died all alone, if I hadn’t been there.”
“It’s a good thing you were, then,” Ahsoka said, and despite the fact that Anakin had been flagrantly disobeying his orders, and despite everything that had happened afterward and all the problems for Anakin it had caused, Obi-Wan couldn’t help but agree with her. It had been good, that Shmi Skywalker had gotten to see her son one last time before she’d died. Obi-Wan, too, hoped Anakin would be the last thing he’d see before he died, so he could hardly in good conscience deny someone else the comfort.
“And then I just…snapped,” Anakin said, sounding empty and hollow, both angry and sad but also tired of being angry and sad. “I felt so Dark, and I used it; I” –
“Master Obi-Wan?” Ahsoka interrupted, and Obi-Wan opened his eyes in surprise to look at her. Anakin, too, had turned his head and was looking shocked that she’d interrupted him.
“Snips, I’m trying to tell you something really” – he started.
“I know, and that’s why I want to know if Obi-Wan already knows.”
Obi-Wan did know. Obi-Wan had held a sobbing, shaking Anakin in his arms as he’d spilled out the most gruesome, heartbreaking, infuriating story of Obi-Wan’s life, and Obi-Wan wasn’t sure he had the heart – or the stomach – to hear it again. “Yes,” he said finally. He knew. He didn’t want to, but he did.
“And you forgave him? I mean, he told you about the Dark, but you’re still here, right? With us?"
Obi-Wan wasn’t sure he was ready to go so far as ‘forgiveness,’ just yet, but he was on the path to it, at any rate. “I’m still here,” he confirmed, and he reached out and draped his open hand over Anakin’s where it lay on his thigh. After a second, Anakin wrapped his fingers around Obi-Wan’s and squeezed. Obi-Wan squeezed back comfortingly. Anakin didn’t turn his head to look at him, but he took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Then I don’t want to know the details,” Ahsoka said firmly.
“Snips…” Anakin practically whined, beseechingly.
Ahsoka held up a hand. “It’s in the past; it’s none of my business; and if Obi-Wan can forgive you, then so can I,” she said firmly.
“It’s important to me” – Anakin started to protest.
“It’s important you move on,” Ahsoka said, and Obi-Wan wondered when the hell she’d become so strong and insightful. She’d grown up, in front of his very eyes, it seemed sometimes, but he also felt like he was seeing her for the first time this very moment. “We use the past, let it shape us, but if it’s not helping us grow then we need to let it go. I’ve done all sorts of things I’m not proud of. We just fought a karking war, Skyguy. And I try to learn from my mistakes but…I also have to stop myself from dwelling on them. Or else they’d be all I think about. And that’s not healthy for me or for you.”
“Ahsoka, I’m…enormously flattered, that you think my opinion matters so much, but…” Obi-Wan hardly knew what to say. “You have to realize that when it comes to Anakin, my judgment is…how should I put this…clouded.”
Anakin snorted. “That’s one way of putting it, yeah.”
“Doesn’t make you wrong,” Ahsoka shrugged. “Anyway, we’re fixing it now, aren’t we? We’ll go to Tatooine, free the slaves, you can visit your mother’s grave, and then we’ll move on.”
Anakin smiled at her, at the simplicity of youth. “Something like that, yeah.”
“And no more secrets. Well, no big ones, anyway,” Ahsoka continued. “Like, if you get married again, you have to tell us.”
“I…don’t actually think I can get married again? I’m still married right now. Padmé and I haven’t gotten a divorce yet.” He turned in his seat to face Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan unclasped their hands and brought his back to his own lap. “Obi-Wan, we have to go to Naboo so I can get a divorce.”
“Fine,” Obi-Wan clipped out. “We’ll add it to the list, shall we?”
“I thought you said you weren’t mad at me,” Anakin pouted.
“Hmm,” Obi-Wan growled, pretending to consider it. “Let me check in with myself and see if I’m still angry that Anakin told the Chancellor about multiple important events in his life before he told me.” He paused. “Yes! Yes, I am. Still angry. Just so you know.”
Ahsoka leaned around Anakin to look Obi-Wan in the eye. “Aren’t you supposed to release your anger into the Force?”
Obi-Wan frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll get to it when I get to it.”
“So…okay, now I’m confused,” Anakin admitted. “Who is angry at me, and for what, and who isn’t?”
“Let’s make a pact, right now,” Ahsoka said, and she held her hand out, hovering over Anakin’s right knee. “No more keeping any secrets from each other, from this point forward.”
“Okay,” Anakin said, and he rested his gloved hand on top of Ahsoka’s. Obi-Wan didn’t join in.
“That goes for you, too, Obi-Wan,” Ahsoka prompted.
“I hardly think we need to worry about me getting married in secret,” Obi-Wan said.
“Oh, don’t we?” Anakin asked, perking up considerably. “Master ‘I-Would-Have-Left-the-Order-If-You’d-Asked’ Kenobi?”
“Wait, what?” Ahsoka asked. She dropped her hand and looked between the both of them in surprise. “Left the Order when?”
“I was eighteen, Anakin; that’s hardly” –
But Anakin wasn’t listening. “Oh, okay, Snips, wait ‘til you hear this. You remember the Duchess Satine?” He turned away from Obi-Wan, sitting cross-legged across the bench. He’d removed his restraining device, at some point since takeoff.
Ahsoka stared at him, mouth open and eyes wide with astonishment. “No.”
“Yes. Obi-Wan” –
“Please, please stop,” Obi-Wan begged the ceiling, but neither the ceiling nor Anakin paid him any mind.
“Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon were sent to Mandalore on a protection detail” –
“Wait.” Ahsoka leaned around Anakin to look at Obi-Wan. “You were still a Padawan?”
Obi-Wan had his eyes closed, as if he were awaiting his execution, but he nodded. “Yes.”
“Sith karking hells, Obi-Wan,” Ahsoka said, sounding awestruck.
At that, Obi-Wan cracked one eye open to look at her. “Where did you learn – oh, never mind.” Anakin, a little sheepishly, had started to raise his hand. “Why do I even bother.” He closed his eyes again and went back to pretending he was ignoring them.
“And Obi-Wan – this Obi-Wan,” Anakin exclaimed, pointing at him, as if Ahsoka knew more than one person named Obi-Wan and might be mixing them up, “fell in love, and apparently it was very much mutual, and he offered to quit the Jedi Order for her and stay on Mandalore forever.”
“Wow,” Ahsoka breathed.
“But she was focusing on leading her people, don’t know where I’ve heard that one before, and she told him she wouldn’t ask him to do that and they went their separate ways. Also, there was something about him carrying her across a river, and it was probably very romantic until he dropped her, and apparently she ended up with a scar in a very compromising” -
“Anakin!” Obi-Wan’s eyes flew open, as Anakin had known they would. “Look, if you’re not going to bother telling the story right, maybe you should” –
“Wait for you tell it instead? Great idea! Go ahead. We’re all ears.” Anakin turned in his seat so that both he and Ahsoka were now looking expectantly at Obi-Wan, who groaned.
“Don’t spread stories about the dead, Anakin,” Obi-Wan snapped, sounding hurt, and Anakin wondered if possibly he’d gone too far. “Besides, it wasn’t on her ass,” he added quietly, and Anakin grinned like a very smug tooka. “I’m going to go get us something to eat,” Obi-Wan grunted, feeling like abandoning that conversation, and he got up and walked away.
Fortunately for Obi-Wan, they ate in companionable silence, and when they’d finished and handed their rubbish to the trash collector droid Ahsoka asked if they wouldn’t mind if she took second or third watch rather than first, as she’d like to get some sleep. Not having any available space in their row to properly lie down, she twisted where she sat, propped her feet up on the wall of the shuttle next to the window, and laid her head on Anakin’s lap.
Once he was reasonably sure she was asleep, Obi-Wan turned to his partner. “What are we doing here, Anakin?” he asked in a low whisper. “Are we wrong, for taking her away from everything she’s ever known?”
“She asked to go,” Anakin reminded him in a low voice.
“Yes, but she’s sixteen. You asked too, at that age. Was I wrong to not take away you then? Is this just…the selfish way out? If we – if I truly believed in everything we say we are, then we have to stay. To see our Order become what it is meant to be again. We’re taught not to abandon things just because they’re difficult. There is no ‘Jedi Order’. There’s just people, and what we say that the Jedi Order is. And if we abandon it, what then?”
Anakin, never usually one for letting silence hang in the air, actually paused before answering, and that more than anything else made Obi-Wan want to sit up and take note.
“You know what I keep thinking of,” Anakin said slowly, like he was deep in thought. “Are the Younglings.”
“Really?” This maybe shouldn’t have surprised Obi-Wan as much as it did; taking shifts in the nursery was one of the few Jedi duties Anakin had actually sought out in his youth. He said he liked the unpredictability small children brought to any situation.
Anakin nodded. “Yeah. That’s who I think we’re doing this for. Not us. We fought that war to protect them. We kept them safe and alive. Hopefully they never even knew a war was happening. With any luck they’ll remember the stories of it, more than the thing itself. We…well, I guess we never really did defeat the Separatists, after all.” He allowed himself a small smile.
“I don’t think the Separatists really ever were the enemy,” Obi-Wan admitted softly.
“Well, defeated a Sith, at any rate,” Anakin corrected. “Or a couple of them. But we didn’t do it for us. At least, I didn’t. We did it for them. For her.” He looked down at Ahsoka’s sleeping, peaceful face in his lap. “They’re the ones who get to decide what the Jedi Order becomes. Not us. We had our chance. But the only reason that they’re going to get that chance is because we got them this far. Our jobs here are done. That’s it. That’s the balance.”
Obi-Wan thought about Padawans. He thought about how fortunate he was that he was allowed this, to be sitting on a shuttle bench beside his Padawan, and his Padawan’s Padawan, in a galaxy that, for the moment at least, was not being torn apart by civil war. He thought about the other civil wars he’d fought – the smaller ones, like the one he’d tried and failed to protect Satine from – and the big ones, too. He thought about all the times he’d come so close to losing Anakin. He thought about the times – such as, oh, last rotation – when Anakin had come so close to losing himself. But here they still were. Together. Trying.
Master Yoda had tried to explain something to him, once. Obi-Wan had been young, and lost, and nervous, and so full of fear, and that fear had boiled over into anger. Master Yoda had sat him down and told him that trying to do a thing was as good as doing it. Obi-Wan could say he was going to try to lift a rock, but if the rock left the ground, did it matter what his intentions had been? He was still doing it. Fine, feel like an outsider, feel like he didn’t belong. So long as he kept doing the things he should, eventually he would look back on his life and realize he hadn’t been trying all along; he’d simply have been doing.
“We made a better galaxy. For her,” Anakin continued, his gaze flicking down to Ahsoka. “We’ve already done it. Whatever else we do – and we get to choose, now, for real, for the first time in any of our lives – we’ll always have already done that. Nothing we do now can ever take that away from us.”
Obi-Wan reached out and cupped Anakin’s chin in his hand. “You have grown so far beyond what even I ever hoped you could be,” he said softly, and to his surprise he felt tears start to prick the corners of his eyes. Anakin tilted his chin, pressing his face more firmly into Obi-Wan’s palm, holding him steady as he held his gaze.
“And she’ll be better than either of us,” Anakin added in a soft whisper. “Isn’t that what you told the Chan - Palpatine? Our students are always going to overtake us?”
Obi-Wan nodded. “You make me a better Jedi, Anakin,” he said, his voice going throaty and hoarse with the effort. “A better man.”
Anakin blinked rapidly, and now it was his turn for a few tears to roll off his eyelashes and down his face. Obi-Wan felt one of them splash against his thumb.
“Fuck, Obi-Wan,” Anakin said, and he clearly didn’t want to shift or disturb Ahsoka but he finagled one arm out from underneath her and wrapped it around Obi-Wan’s shoulders, instead, and Obi-Wan knew if he kept looking at Anakin he was going to lose it, too; he was already barely holding it together after the stress of what had happened in Palpatine’s office, and he let Anakin tug him down until his head was resting on Anakin’s shoulder. This way, at least, they didn’t have to look each other in the eye. “I love you so much, and I will follow you anywhere you go,” Anakin whispered, so only Obi-Wan could hear him. “Even if it’s back to the Jedi. I need you to know this. If this doesn’t work out – I don’t know, maybe we’re…wrong, about all of it, and you decide we need to go back – I mean I don’t want to go back, but I would. For you. They’d take us back. You know they would.”
And Obi-Wan appreciated that he’d said it, really he did. But he knew in his heart they never would. Taking that leap away from the Jedi had been the most terrifying thing Obi-Wan had ever done, and he’d done some pretty reckless things, in his time. But now that he’d done it, he didn’t regret it.
He was exhausted, and worn out, and he fell asleep right where he was, Anakin holding him against his shoulder.
He woke up to the sensation of the toe of Anakin’s boot poking him in the thigh. “Your watch, Master,” Anakin said, and then yawned. Anakin had moved so that his back was against the wall, where Ahsoka’s feet had been, and Ahsoka was now curled up in Anakin’s lap, the side of her face pressed against his chest, her mouth open as she snored. Anakin was taking up two seats with his legs, and they still didn’t fit, so Obi-Wan did him a favor and lifted Anakin’s boots onto his own lap.
They both looked fondly down at Ahsoka. “I keep wanting to reach for her Padawan beads. I forget they’re not there anymore,” Anakin said, his hand hovering over her shoulder.
Obi-Wan patted his shin. “Go to sleep, Anakin.”
Anakin let his head rest against the shuttle wall and closed his eyes. “Yes, Master.”
They swapped again while the shuttle made a stop at Vlemoth Port, Obi-Wan moving to lean against the window and trying and failing to make a comfortable pillow out of his and Anakin’s Jedi robes balled up together. By the time he woke up, Anakin and Ahsoka were sitting cross-legged on the bench, an assortment of snack foods spread out around them. “I gave Ahsoka some credits and she hopped off when we refueled on Eroudac and got us something to eat. Here,” Anakin said, extending something cylindrical and wrapped in flimsi out to him. Obi-Wan didn’t recognize it, but it smelled good, at least.
“It’s kind of like a ronto wrap, but there’s no ronto in it,” Ahsoka said, her mouth full of food.
“Eroudac is far from the ideal habitable climate for rontos,” Obi-Wan mused as he took the sandwich.
“Thank you, Professor Ecology,” Anakin snarked, but there was a note of fondness in his voice, too.
“Hey, Master?” Ahsoka asked suddenly. She still hadn’t finished swallowing. “I had a weird thought. You know how you told Padmé that she probably shouldn’t get pregnant because you had a vision that she’ll die in childbirth?”
“Great, Snips,” Anakin said, moving past snark and straight on to sarcasm. “Thank you for listening in on my private conversations with my wife, now, too.”
“No problem,” Ahsoka said lightly. “So, here’s my thought. If she doesn’t – like, if she just lives a totally normal life and dies in her sleep when she’s eighty-five, or whatever it is humans live to, and your vision doesn’t come true…then that means it wasn’t a real vision, right?”
“Felt pretty real,” Anakin snorted.
“Precognition is…a temperamental thing,” Obi-Wan cut in to say. “Nothing is for certain. ‘Always in motion is the future’, as Master Yoda likes to say.”
“But precognition isn’t usually your gift,” Ahsoka pressed on. “I know we all just handwave it because, ‘Chosen One’, or whatever, but you’re not usually prone to visions…are you?”
Anakin shook his head and took another bite of his meal. “No. Just those two.”
“Are you suggesting Anakin’s dreams may have been…tampered with, in some way?” Obi-Wan asked Ahsoka, who shrugged.
“Maybe. It’s just a thought.”
“But my mother did die. Exactly the way I dreamt she would,” Anakin persisted.
“But not in a way that makes any sense,” Ahsoka said. “You said it yourself. The people who killed her” –
“They’re not people,” Anakin growled angrily.
“They didn’t have a reason to, is my point,” Ahsoka said, clearly choosing to ignore the way the Force was gathering darkly around their seatmate.
“Because they just…like torturing and killing innocent people, I guess,” Anakin said, and handed the rest of his breakfast to Obi-Wan. “Here. I’m not hungry anymore. I’m going to go take a walk.” He stood up, scooted past Ahsoka’s knees, and stalked down the aisle, disappearing through the door that led to the adjoining shuttle car.
“Well, that went well,” Ahsoka sighed. She pointed to Anakin’s abandoned meal. “Can I have that?”
Obi-Wan silently passed it to her, absorbed in mulling over her question.
He hadn’t really gotten anywhere useful with it before Anakin stalked back ten minutes later and stood at the end of their row, hands on his hips, glaring down at them. “I don’t want to talk about how my mom died, anymore,” he declared, eyes flashing. Then he suddenly softened. “But I don’t want to be angry at you guys anymore, either. I’m sick of feeling alone, like everyone is out to get me and only pretending to be nice to me because they want me to do something for them.” He wiped his nose with his leather glove. “Palpatine made me feel like that. He told me I couldn’t trust the Jedi, and made me think that you didn’t want me, and that he was my only friend, and that Ahsoka was going to leave me and that Padmé was going to die.”
Ahsoka was visibly offended. “I’m not going to leave you! Why would I leave you?”
At the same time, Obi-Wan reached out and took Anakin’s hand in his. He tugged gently. “Come here. Sit down.” Anakin flopped onto the bench and rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.
“If we’d stayed you would have left me,” Anakin told Ahsoka, muttering his words at the floor. “When you became a Knight. That’s what Padawans do.”
Ahsoka audibly snorted. “Yeah, like you left your Master. Sure, Skyguy.”
“She…may have a bit of a point,” Obi-Wan admitted.
“I didn’t get it, until just now,” Anakin said slowly. “All that shavit about you” – his gaze flicked to Obi-Wan, just for a moment, before traveling back down to the floor again – “and how you were looking to get rid of me, and how I was just a tool for the Council, and you most of all.”
“Palpatine said that about me?” Obi-Wan blinked, and Anakin nodded miserably. “You talked about me? With the Chancellor?”
“…Kind of a lot, actually,” Anakin admitted sheepishly.
“Is that where all this has been coming from? About me not wanting you, and the Council not trusting you?”
Anakin nodded again.
“That’s how long this has been going on?” Obi-Wan was suddenly enraged both on Anakin’s behalf, that someone Anakin had trusted as a confidant had been putting him down since he was a small child, and at himself, that he’d allowed it to happen.
“I didn’t…know what it was,” Anakin said, picking at a stain on his trousers to give himself something to focus on. “It all just…well, you know how he talked. Everything made so much sense, at the time.”
“He was a politician, in addition to a Sith,” Obi-Wan grunted. “That’s his job.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t make hanging out with me seem like he thought it was a job,” Anakin protested. “It seemed like…like it was something he wanted to do.”
“He probably did,” Ahsoka said, and Anakin turned his head to look at her. “Want to hang out with you, I mean. ‘Cause you’re…you know. You.”
Obi-Wan paused to gather his thoughts before speaking. “I can’t pretend I don’t rely on you, Anakin,” he admitted, and now Anakin was looking at him instead. “Almost certainly more than I ought to have done.” Obi-Wan being Knighted at nineteen was supposed to have been an anomaly, a concession to extraordinary circumstances. Only they’d Knighted Anakin at nineteen, too, because a new and different set of extraordinary circumstances had presented themselves. Obi-Wan had been too young. He understood that, now. Which meant Anakin had been too. But, rather than stick up for his Padawan and break the pattern, Obi-Wan had let it happen again. “But I promise you that you are not alone. You never have been.”
Anakin breathed out, then back in again. He was back to staring at the floor, but he did stretch his arm out across where Ahsoka was sitting and pat Obi-Wan on the knee. “That’s what really did it,” he admitted. “I’d look at you, sometimes. Out on the battlefield. You’d do something reckless and foolhardy, and I’d think, huh, that’s weird, that’s something I would do. Only I knew that…that half the stuff I got away with, I was only getting away with because one or both of you two, or Rex or Hawk or Cody or whoever, was always going to be there to catch me. And I realized that you were doing it because you knew the same thing.” When he turned to look at Obi-Wan, his eyes were shining. “You kept getting yourself caught or pinned down or arrested or throwing yourself off cliffs or blowing up bridges because you trusted that I would be there for you, too. And that didn’t match up, with what the Chancellor was telling me. I don’t like the war; I hate it, but…” He looked down at his hands again. “I think I needed it. To see what was really going on.”
Now it was Obi-Wan’s turn to rub him on the back. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. We all missed it. It took Palpatine standing in front of seven Jedi and announcing, ‘I am a Sith Lord’ for us to do anything about it.” (Damn, he really hated admitting Dooku had been right. He had told him the truth, back on Geonosis, but Obi-Wan hadn’t been ready to listen.)
“He had to make you feel alone, Skyguy,” Ahsoka said. “Because he wanted to steal you away from us and make you his apprentice. And that was never going to happen if you knew that we actually really like you.”
Anakin cracked a smile at that. Obi-Wan was glad to see it.