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The mask fell away, and Obi-Wan stared.

For a moment, they were not on this rocky moon having a last stand. Time stopped, and all he could see was what ought to have been, had the universe been kinder to him; the face of Anakin who had matured with grace, golden curls framing his face and the scar over his eye faded—

“Anakin,” he whispered.

“Anakin is gone,” said the boy he had once trained; the Sith he thought he’d left for dead ten years ago. His voice was distorted still, but traces of Anakin’s voice bled through. It made it worse. “I am what remains.”

“I’m sorry,” he choked out. “I’m sorry, Anakin. For all of it.”

Anakin wheezed. His crimson blade lowered for a second, and only Obi-Wan’s remained raised; it painted the scars that covered what was left of his cheek and forehead a familiar, pure blue. “I’m not your failure, Obi-Wan,” Anakin rasped, and with two hands, lifted up his own weapon again. “You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker. I did.”

Obi-Wan tensed. Anakin moved forward, and landed on one knee. A hand gloved in black armour went to his face, head bowing forwards. It would take one measured stroke of a lightsaber to end the wretched life that had become his apprentice’s. Obi-Wan tried to imagine stepping forward, leaning his weight on his right leg and forcing his lightsaber in a downward arch.

It would be the right thing to do, but he could not muster up the image. Even now, that faraway fantasy of Anakin with that easy, lopsided grin on his face was easier to conjure up despite the insurmountable distance between this universe and that one. Obi-Wan’s chest tightened in sync with Anakin’s as the Sith gasped for breath.

“I never wanted this,” Obi-Wan forced out.

“Neither did I,” Anakin said miserably in that low, solemn voice that shouldn’t be his. His breath grew more ragged with every moment that they stared at each other. Anakin bowed forward, his head bowed low as his breath wheezed. “Obi-Wan.”

“What—what are you—”

“Help me.”

Obi-Wan hesitated. Anakin’s lightsaber was still active, still bathing its owner in the crimson light that spoke of blood and anger, but his distress was palpable in the Force. Anakin swayed, and then he toppled over in much the same way a mountain crumbled. The lightsaber carefully, slowly—as if it doubted that it should—rolled out of his fingers, dark moondust engulfing the gleaming hilt.

Anakin didn’t move. 

“Oh, blast it all,” Obi-Wan breathed out, and found himself on his knees in front of the suit he’d nearly destroyed only minutes ago. His lightsaber hissed as he deactivated it and hung it on his belt, and his hands hovered over Anakin uselessly. The debris of the same rocks he’d thrown at him now dug painfully in his knees, and he could feel the way that dirt and soot were clinging to his skin, mixing with sweat.

This was the worst possible thing he could do, and he wordlessly asked for absolution as he grabbed Anakin by his armpits and began to heave him towards his starship.

The red lightsaber, he left where it had fallen from Anakin’s grasp.

~*~

Obi-Wan had had few choices, and he second-guessed all of them until he no longer had the privilege of time. In the end, he landed on a sparsely inhabited settlement on the moon of Da’kla-Tis a system over. It would have medical facilities and, while it was part of the Empire, it had little that could possibly be of interest, so he anticipated a lack of Stormtroopers. 

Not that he was really up-to-date with the current politics of any of the galaxy, really. But he had little time to research as Anakin’s signature grew dimmer and dimmer in the back of Obi-Wan’s ship.

Da’kla-Tis had a landing platform that was manned by a single Twi’lek, who was easily convinced that no one had arrived at all with a simple Force trick, and who instructed Obi-Wan towards the nearest village that had a medical centre. Obi-Wan heaved Anakin in a speeder that he hoped he was only borrowing, but was probably stealing.

Well. Let it not be said that Obi-Wan Kenobi was above petty theft.

That day passed in a flurry that he would have a hard time recalling afterwards. Da’kla-Tis’ northern hemisphere, which was where Obi-Wan had steered them, was mostly jungle and difficult to navigate, its roads often overgrown with moss and bramble and thick roots. Still, the Twi’lek’s information proved true, because it took him only an hour or so before he reached a clearing large enough for a settlement to have made its home. 

There were maybe fifty or so dwellings, mostly made from vines and bark, weaving effortlessly into the ancient, tall trees and shrubs that made up so much of the planet, boughs and canopy so thick and distant that the sky nearly disappeared from sight. Obi-Wan had to crane his neck to see how far up the trees went and still was not entirely sure. 

Despite the absolute harmony with nature, one or two droids whizzed around, and several speeders were parked between homes. String lights haphazardly connected trees, providing warm light in a place the sun could barely reach, creating odd, dark shadows to play over the bark. Obi-Wan left Anakin stranded in the speeder a little distance away from the village and went to speak to whomever was in charge.

The female Twi’lek had absolutely no patience for him and no interest whatsoever in his story, but reluctantly let Obi-Wan pay for a single canister of bacta, a power converter, and an old-fashioned electrical breathing pump that had gone out of use in the majority of the galaxy before Obi-Wan had even been born. 

As soon as he had his materials in hand, he all but ran back to the speeder and set off for a serviceable tree to act as cover. It had started to rain, gentle but insistent, and Anakin’s dark suit was getting splattered with mud. Obi-Wan worried it would probably not do him much good to catch pneumonia. Fortunately it didn’t take long to find a tree that towered over them both, its roots so large that they reached Obi-Wan's midriff, and its base partly rotted away so that it left them a sort of cave to hide in.

Another cave, Obi-Wan considered without much humour. It wasn’t much better than his old one, but at least he didn’t miss the sand.

He set to work. He used the power converter to get the medical pump to work, hooking it up to the speeder’s power unit. It whirred with a hesitant gurgle as if the machine itself wasn’t sure whether it should still work in this century, but it would have to do. Obi-Wan was out of options and out of time.

Anakin had not moved at all, not even so much as twitched. He laid at the far end of the tree-cave, his head awkwardly trying to slump against his shoulder. The suit did not allow the motion, so that his mask was caught somewhere that gravity didn’t want it to be. His head lolled when Obi-Wan crouched before him. He hesitated, his fingertips resting against Anakin’s cold mask, watching as raindrops slowly trickled on Anakin’s black chestpiece.

He ripped off the mask.

Obi-Wan did not allow himself anything but the most medically professional calm as he stuck the pump against Anakin’s mouth and pressed it inside, pinching together Anakin’s nose as the machine did its work.

Anakin gasped, yellow-gold eyes snapping open to find Obi-Wan’s.

“Calm down,” Obi-Wan instructed strictly as Anakin uselessly grasped for the pump. Except it wasn’t so useless, because his suit made him stronger than humanly possible, and he shoved Obi-Wan hard towards the ground. Obi-Wan hissed as he scratched open his palms in an attempt to catch himself.

Anakin grabbed the pump, taking several careful breaths. His eyes never left Obi-Wan’s, like a predator assessing when to make the kill. 

“What—” he gasped, taking off the device between words, “are you doing?”

“Don’t ask me,” said Obi-Wan bitterly. It started to feel more like a useless endeavour with every second, and he half-expected Anakin to tighten his fingers into a fist and choke Obi-Wan with his command of the Force. Even half-dead, he should be strong enough to crush Obi-Wan’s larynx. 

“Obi,” Anakin wheezed.

Obi-Wan froze. It was lack of air that had cut off Anakin’s words, of course, that was the only explanation. But Anakin had called him Obi, occasionally, when he was nine and didn’t really care for proper titles or understood the need for them. By the time he was eleven, he’d always called him Master Obi-Wan, but before he’d done that—

Obi. Anakin had called him Obi. He’d never done it again after Obi-Wan had managed to instill the importance of calling people by their titles, never, not even in their most intimate conversations, the days their friendship was closer than ever.

He put a hand to his face and let the impossible tears fall quietly. He could feel his shoulders shake with the strength of them, and he did not have time to cry; did not have time for any of this useless grief that had hung around him ten years already, burdening him, burying him.

And so he did what he had ten years practise at doing, and steadied himself. Anakin was still watching him, the ragged sound of his breathing mingling with the gurgle of his air pump. It covered his white lips and chin. For the first time, Obi-Wan let himself look. 

Anakin was pale as death, starkly contrasting against the dark of his suit. His hair was all gone, and his face was more scar than skin; they were raised and angry and old, and Obi-Wan suspected they still hurt, by the look of them. It hardly made sense for them to still ache—but they weren’t well-treated, not in the way they could have been. 

Obi-Wan wondered how long Anakin had been left in the bacta tank when Sidious had found him. What had been left of him at that point. It would have been a kindness to kill him, in hindsight. 

In hindsight Obi-Wan should have done many things differently, but killing Anakin probably was one he couldn’t have brought himself to do regardless. He didn’t linger on that thought, because the proof sat before him, breathing from an air pump that was hooked up to a speeder on a planet that neither of them knew.

“It’s not a permanent solution,” Obi-Wan said lamely, and slowly forced himself back to his knees. Anakin had pushed him far enough that there were now several paces between them, and Obi-Wan didn’t bother to close the gap. “But this was the closest planet I could find with anything that resembled a medical bay. I realise that it’s part of the Empire, but very few people live here. I gambled that we would not be found here. At least for a while.”

Anakin’s eyes were half-lidded with exhaustion. He took another deep breath with help of the pump, and then kept it a short distance away from his lips in order to talk.

“My suit?” he asked.

Obi-Wan considered it. He didn’t know what most of the functions were that the suit offered Anakin; medical, he assumed, but probably some of it was superficial, only created to make Anakin look more threatening. He didn’t really need a voice modulator, after all, but he had one. Of course, Anakin did lack several limbs.

Obi-Wan grimaced.

“Does it power any of your internal organs?” he asked slowly.

Another breath. “Lungs.”

“Not your heart?”

Breath. “No.”

“Well, I don’t know what I can do about that now,” Obi-Wan said apologetically. “We’d need either an engineer or a medical droid to fix it, especially since I don’t know what kind of specifications you require, but I’m not sure what worlds have the necessary technology that aren’t aligned with the Empire.”

It was easier to talk about injuries than anything else. At least it was familiar, which didn’t make it better at all, but it was a comfortable, well-tread topic of conversation between the two of them. Obi-Wan almost wanted to laugh at the thought.

“Then again,” he continued, when Anakin didn’t remove his pump to talk, “Perhaps that is what you want me to do? I could drop you at any Empire-governed planet and they will have you treated, presumably. Of course, I’d need another ship, because I’d rather not be arrested when I deliver you back, if you don’t mind. Well. I suppose you do mind.”

“Stop,” Anakin grit out, “talking.”

Obi-Wan drew in on himself. “Yes,” he muttered, and ran a hand across his face. He’d smeared blood on himself, he realised at the whiff of iron. Anakin’s expression twisted oddly, incomprehensibly. Obi-Wan didn’t pretend he could read Anakin’s emotions on this stranger’s face, and just rubbed his sleeve across his cheeks and sat back against the tree wall, rough grooves painfully poking his shoulder blades.

He let his head fall back and closed his eyes. He didn’t know what he was doing.

A ragged breath, and then Anakin’s voice. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Obi-Wan asked tiredly. He didn’t move his head to look at his old apprentice. He didn’t want to have his heart broken with every glance at that scarred, disfigured face that had once been the Republic’s darling Jedi Knight and Obi-Wan’s apprentice. 

“Drop me—” A cough, a gurgle of the pump, and another wheezing breath, “—in his lap. Don’t. Promise.”

“Alright,” Obi-Wan said, and drew his knees up to his chin. The wobbly bone felt hard and uncomfortable against his cheekbone, but there was no soft place to sleep. All he had were his robes, his lightsaber, and Anakin. Once upon a time, that would’ve been enough. “Alright. I won’t.”

A moment of silence. “Why?”

Obi-Wan didn’t answer.

~*~

He slept, but in fits, always surprised when he jolted to awareness because he hadn’t realised he’d been asleep. It reminded him of the war. For once, nightmares weren’t what kept him up, but instead that uncomfortable niggling feeling that all humans were born with: survival instinct. Every time he woke up, he found Anakin’s eyes on him, and was unsettled all over again, believing he wouldn’t manage to sleep until he woke up again.

The sun hardly reached the ground through the thick brambles and branches and foliage, but their environment became somewhat better-lit by the time morning rolled around anyway. Faint dapples of warm, muted light painted the undergrowth that covered much of the forest.

“Planet?” Anakin asked. He’d been using the pump throughout the night, but the sound had fast become white noise to Obi-Wan. Even Anakin’s loud wheezes felt part of the metaphorical furniture by now.

Obi-Wan was checking over the speeder. They hadn’t depleted the power unit, because the pump really didn’t require much to keep it going, but there was also no solution that would last. They could hardly camp out here forever. He’d hoped that Anakin would have more of an idea to fix himself, but so far, he hadn’t mentioned any.

“Da’kla-Tis,” Obi-Wan answered absentmindedly, checking the speeder’s nooks and crannies for anything edible. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d eaten anything, and he was starting to feel the lack of it. He hadn’t gone into this adventure with much energy to spare as it was; rations on Tatooine had been scarce, and he’d given his away more than once.

Another one of those ragged breaths. Obi-Wan was starting to recognise the sound of Anakin’s deep inhalations in order to ready himself to speak. “Suit failing. Need—” A cough, and Obi-Wan turned around to look at Anakin. “—droid.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan said, and frowned. Anakin had managed to sit up, but he looked sickly and tired. It was hard to believe that Anakin was only thirty-three; he should’ve been in the prime of his life. The suit was sputtering where Obi-Wan had sliced it open. “But you didn’t want me to return you to the Emperor. If it were as simple as walking into a med-bay and stealing a droid, I would. But you will require parts, and I don’t know which ones, and your surgery will require time.”

Anakin frowned angrily at him. “Your fault,” he spit out, and put the pump back to his lips. It whirred faster than it did before, presumably to keep up with Anakin’s faster breathing.

Frustration surged in Obi-Wan. “Yes, it always comes down to that, doesn’t it?” he snapped. “You do realise you didn’t need to have Inquisitors come after me, and you didn’t need to have me hunted down to the ends of the galaxy, and you didn’t need to follow me to a moon to kill me. What do you want from me, Anakin?”

Anakin frowned deeply. “Not my name.”

“Sure,” Obi-Wan said darkly. “Darth Vader.”

Anakin stared impassively in retaliation. Obi-Wan turned away, breathing hard, and he climbed into the speeder’s passenger seat, tugging at the small cabinet under the seating. It was empty, and he tamped down a groan of frustration.

“Lungs,” Anakin said, “will fail.” Wheeze. “Tomorrow.”

Obi-Wan’s shoulders slumped. He could still feel Anakin’s eyes on him, eternally examining, incessantly judging. He couldn’t figure out why Anakin hadn’t simply choked him to death, but perhaps it wasn’t that difficult to figure out the reason. He’d be stranded here without Obi-Wan, and then he’d die, too, with only a corpse to keep him company.

It would be fitting, really, for them to die to one another. But not the outcome either of them wanted, he expected.

“Priorities,” Obi-Wan muttered, and pressed his lips together. “I left my ship at the starport, but it’s not really meant for two people. So we’ll have to steal one that can carry us both without having to drag you over my shoulders. And then… Well. What’s nearby and has more advanced medicine?” He snapped his fingers. “Draycu. We can reach it in three hours.”

Anakin was shaking his head. “Empire,” he rasped. 

Obi-Wan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Of course. I should’ve guessed.”

“You don’t—” Wheeze. “—know?”

“What planets belong to the Empire?” Obi-Wan asked. Anakin shrugged, and it was such a human gesture that Obi-Wan’s heart broke all over again. He kept his voice even as he replied. “Vaguely. I imagine you’ll understand that I’ve kept away from most civilisations the past ten years. If I got any news at all, it usually was several months out of date and wrong, half the time.”

“Where?”

Obi-Wan barked out a laugh. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Same place?” Anakin glared at the pump in frustration. “Ten years?”

Obi-Wan considered the answer. It wouldn’t really do any harm for Anakin to know that he had stayed put for a decade, but he also didn’t really see why Anakin cared. Communication clearly cost him dearly, and yet Anakin kept trying to talk; and what for? To know that Obi-Wan hadn’t moved out of his cave until he’d received an emergency call from—

Oh.

“Force,” Obi-Wan said, and rubbed his forehead where an ache was already building. “I know where to go.”

~*~

Bail Organa had once held Padmé Amidala in his med-bay as she gave birth to Luke and Leia. That ship had belonged to him, and had been unregistered; it was the reason he’d chosen it in the first place. Obi-Wan had never figured out why a Senator from Alderaan needed to own a spaceship illegally, and it hadn’t really been the time to ask.

Now, it was Anakin’s only hope.

“But won’t you come to us?” Bail pleaded. Leia had arrived on Alderaan a day ago, and was now asleep. Obi-Wan didn’t know whether he was pleased or disappointed that he couldn’t talk to her, but considering her biological father sat not half a kilometre away from Obi-Wan, perhaps it was a good thing. “I don’t understand what you need the ship for, Obi-Wan.”

“Please just take care of it,” Obi-Wan pleaded. “I need to help… an old friend. He’s injured, and I can’t take him to the Empire, Bail. It’s impossible.”

“Who is this friend?” Bail asked, eyebrows arched high. “Another Jedi?”

Obi-Wan hesitated. “The less you know, the better. You know that I wouldn’t ask if I had another option.”

There never really was a chance that Bail would refuse him. He had been a good friend before the Republic had fallen; perhaps he was now the only one who could claim the title in Obi-Wan’s life. And he’d just saved Leia. Leia, whose father would die if he didn’t do this.

“Alright. I’ll have a droid pilot it to the coordinates you requested. You can keep the Sundered Heart as long as you need.” Bail hesitated. “Please take care of yourself, Obi-Wan. I know I asked you to risk much by helping Leia, but I would hate to see something happen to you.”

“I will,” Obi-Wan said warmly. “Send her my regards. I still have her little droid in my starship, by the way—Lola. When this is all over…” He had no idea if it ever could be. Would be. “I’ll try and get it back to her.”

“Give it to her yourself,” Bail said meaningfully, and smiled. “May the Force be with you.”

“And you,” Obi-Wan said, and Bail disappeared. 

He hiked back to where Anakin was still leaning heavily against the tree they’d slept in, heaving as he let the pump do its work. Anakin glowered at Obi-Wan as he came back. It should’ve lost a lot of its heat due to the pathetic state he found himself in, but the burning anger blanketed the whole area. It rang in the Force.

Obi-Wan winced, and that seemed to only make Anakin angrier. “Feel that,” he accused in between gasps. “Warmth. Love.” Wheeze. “You ooze.”

“And that makes you angry?” Obi-Wan asked mildly. He was surprised that Anakin had even felt Obi-Wan’s emotions so keenly in the Force, but perhaps he shouldn’t have been. 

“Yes,” Anakin hissed. “Why—you—happy?”

“Happy?” Obi-Wan repeated. The word demanded disbelief; it felt so preposterous to suggest that Obi-Wan was in any way or shape happy that he couldn’t quite fathom how Anakin had reached so erroneous a conclusion. “You think I’m happy? You think I’ve felt even a shred of happiness in the last ten years? Is that what you believe?”

Anakin was stubbornly quiet, but his golden eyes flowed with molten lava, loathing boiling over. If Anakin had felt the tendrils of Obi-Wan’s comfort in friendship, then he could feel in return the sharp, hateful stab of Anakin’s malice between his ribs, settling there like a knife. 

Obi-Wan clenched his jaw as he grabbed Anakin by his upper arm. The suit was surprisingly warm to the touch, a little slippery against the tips of his fingers, and Obi-Wan hoisted Anakin’s arm over his own shoulder. He was not in the mood for conversation, and Anakin was unable to say a word as he had to hold onto his pump for dear life. Obi-Wan certainly wasn’t in the mood to assist him.

He set Anakin down in the passenger’s seat and climbed in front of the steering wheel himself. It was a stark reverse of how they had chosen seats ever since Anakin had been old enough to drive a speeder—so, sixteen years old. Obi-Wan’s fingers were pale as death as he clutched the rudder. 

“Where?” Anakin managed as he’d settled in his seat. The movement had made him nauseous, or at least Obi-Wan thought it had; it would explain the faintly green hue of his skin.

“I managed to get us a ship with a med-bay,” Obi-Wan said curtly. Anakin’s comment about happiness still rankled. As if the mere potential for happiness hadn’t crumbled away under his feet the moment Anakin had Fallen. Even if the Republic had survived, even if Sidious had been killed, even if the clones had never turned on the Jedi—that would have done it. As long as Anakin was shrouded in Darkness, none of it mattered. Obi-Wan’s capacity for happiness had died with Anakin. “I asked for it to be sent to a patch of empty space. It’s not licensed, so we can’t land it in any spaceport without attracting attention, and I didn’t want to take the risk. So we’ll still have to steal a starship, but at least we have somewhere to go.”

Anakin didn’t say anything else. Obi-Wan activated the speeder and went back the way he’d come only a day earlier.

It felt like a lifetime ago.

~*~

Obi-Wan returned the speeder, and proceeded to steal a starship that would comfortably fit two people. Before that, he managed to sneak into his own ship and get Lola; he knew Anakin noticed the little droid in his hands, but he didn’t ask, and Obi-Wan didn’t explain.

Stealing a starship was a little more than petty theft, but it turned out that Obi-Wan Kenobi was not above that, either. He half-expected Anakin to make a comment about it as he once again used a Force compulsion to confuse the poor Twi’lek who guarded the starport and took a ship that was decidedly not his, but he didn’t say anything. Anakin simply leaned on Obi-Wan and kept his air pump pressed to his lips, his ragged breathing unbearably loud when he was so close to Obi-Wan’s ears.

Obi-Wan let him sag down on one of the chairs and activated the engines. He’d have liked to offer enough credits to make up for this theft, but he hardly had enough for that, and even if he did, it wouldn’t really have made any of it right.

If anyone could make a criminal of him, he supposed, it would always have been Anakin.

“Two hours,” he said as soon as they entered the mesosphere. From a distance, Da’kla-Tis was beautiful with its various shades of green. It was exactly the sort of planet that Anakin would have grinned at, in the past, the opposite of Tatooine’s sun-scorched dunes.

But Anakin just wheezed, and kept his eyes intently focused on Obi-Wan.

~*~

Returning to the Sundered Heart was like stepping back into a nightmare.

It hadn’t changed much from the day the Republic had fallen. Obi-Wan’s body went numb as he landed their stolen ship in the hangar, his mind struggling not to think back to the last time he was here; Luke sleeping against his chest as he’d climbed into the seat. He had been numb, then, too. Unfeeling, because the alternative was feeling too much.

This time, he did not carry Luke. He carried Anakin, or perhaps dragged was more accurate; Anakin groaned, his breath whistling, as he tried to step out with as much grace as he could muster, which wasn’t much, and fell right back into Obi-Wan’s grip. His mechanical fingers dug into Obi-Wan’s shoulders with enough force to leave bruises, but he didn’t speak as they slowly but surely made their way to the med-bay.

Padmé had died here, he thought, skin prickling through the numbness. A medical droid—the same one? Obi-Wan couldn’t recall—took Anakin from his grip emotionlessly, not asking for clarification or assistance. Anakin gasped, and Obi-Wan watched from behind glass as two droids assessed the damage. 

Obi-Wan turned away and found his way to the cockpit, sagging down in the seat. The endless void of space stared back at him, demanding of him a decision on where to go from here. This was not a tenable destination, nor a place for either of them to stay. Obi-Wan didn’t really think there was one.

What was he going to do with Anakin? Fix him up to let him go back to killing at will with no remorse, no second thought, no motive but hatred and power? Obi-Wan’s hands had been drenched red with the blood of Anakin’s victims for ten years. He wasn’t sure whether he could add more to it.

But he couldn’t kill Anakin. He had tried twice, and failed twice. So what option was left?

Obi-Wan mechanically debated taking the easy way out, no particular feeling attached to the thought. He’d considered it before, but not in any substantial, meaningful way. He deserved his exile. He deserved his mission. He loved Luke and Leia, even if that love could never be attached to the children themselves, even if it demanded he keep himself away from them until the time came that they could be trained. And then? 

Sometimes—often, really, far too often to be healthy—he wished that Cody had killed him on Utapau.

He took another breath, and another, and another. He wheezed like Anakin.

A medical droid appeared next to him. “You’re having a panic attack,” it said flatly. “Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.”

Obi-Wan laughed uncontrollably in between the fast breaths, clutching at his hair until it hurt, letting that sharp pain guide him back to reality. The numbness disappeared, the uneasy prickling of his skin fading away, until his breaths evened out. The controls in front of his eyes were blurry and distant and insignificant. The whole stretch of space before him had become insignificant, because there was nowhere to go. There was no escaping, no turning back, no going forward.

Obi-Wan wept, and wept, and wept.

~*~

The surgery had taken fifteen hours, according to the log. He had fallen asleep with salty tears on his cheeks and burning eyes, and when he’d blearily woken up, he’d checked on the ship’s internal records. Obi-Wan had dozed, curled up in the seat, for seventeen hours straight.

Anakin was awake when Obi-Wan finally made it over to the med-bay. He sat absolutely still, statue-like, his arms hanging uselessly by his side now that he did not need to keep hold of his ancient pump. It had been chucked somewhere in the corner. A new, more modern breathing device covered Anakin’s lips, surrounding the lower half of his head. 

Anakin’s eyes were still unmistakably yellow. Still tracked him like prey when the glass door slid open before Obi-Wan, and he sat down gingerly on one of the uncomfortable chairs meant for visitors. He didn’t dare come any closer, although distance hardly mattered.

Anakin’s breaths were soundless; nothing like those harsh, ominous breaths that his broken mask had made. The remaining half of it laid down next to Anakin’s thigh, as if he’d been inspecting it before Obi-Wan came in.

“Surgery successful,” the medical droid informed Obi-Wan in monotone. There were four of them on this ship, total, but only two activated. “See medical logs for details.” Its sensors sharpened as it scanned Obi-Wan. “Physical examination required. Suspected dehydration, malnourishment, possible bodily trauma. Mental examination required due to suspected emotional trauma. Patient log updated with panic attack—”

“Oh, turn yourself off, would you?” said Obi-Wan in exasperation.

The droid dutifully went still, its head lifelessly listing forward in inactivation. It was blessedly silent in the way that ships were never truly silent. The engines were not in use, but the life system whirred above them, electricity humming in the walls and floors. 

Another droid came in. “Physical examination required. Suspected dehydration—”

“I hate droids,” Obi-Wan said with feeling. “Turn off, and don’t turn back on until I activate you.”

It turned off.

Anakin had not moved, but his gloved fingers were slowly flexing. Obi-Wan regarded him for a moment and then took the datapad to look at the medical records. The droids had done what they could, which was already substantially more than Obi-Wan could have managed. They had replaced the destroyed mask with a new one, a better one, that filtered air and didn’t distort his voice, nor took up Anakin’s whole face. They had connected it to the existing suit.

But, the report stated drolly, a new lung was required for optimal quality of life. It could easily be cloned from the lung that was still functioning, but the necessary equipment was not available on a ship of this size. They also advised that Anakin be submerged in bacta for a full three days to allow the old injuries to heal further, and to be fitted for new limbs that weren’t dependent on a mech suit. It limited his healing capacity, the droid had reported. Physical therapy would be needed afterwards, a final note informed Obi-Wan.

What half-life had Sidious offered his apprentice, exactly?

“Why?” Anakin asked. He sounded scarily like he had ten years ago, before the Fall, before the lava. There was no more rasp to his voice. “Why?”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” said Obi-Wan drily.

Anakin growled. “You could’ve killed me. You could’ve left me stranded if you were too weak to do it yourself.”

“You asked me to help you,” Obi-Wan said slowly.

“I was going to kill you,” Anakin hissed.

Obi-Wan stared at him blankly. Anakin’s fists were clenched, his jaw tense, but he did not make a move towards Obi-Wan. For all intents and purposes, Obi-Wan should be dead. Anakin should’ve killed him on Da’kla-Tis as soon as he had enough strength to crush Obi-Wan’s throat, and that should have been the end of it.

Maybe part of him really did want to die, Obi-Wan thought. He hadn’t been sure, but certainly that was the only explanation he could possibly have for dragging his murderous ex-apprentice-turned-Sith along on this adventure. He berated himself for the intent, shame curdling through his stomach.

There were things he needed to atone for.

“Then why haven’t you?” he asked instead.

Anakin sent him a look that betrayed his contemptuous exasperation, as if he couldn’t believe Obi-Wan was this slow on the uptake. It was the same twist of his eyebrows, the same minuscule twitch in his left eye, the same slight widening of his nostrils that Obi-Wan knew so well from when Anakin had been a teenager.

“I have need of you,” Anakin said slowly, measuring out his words carefully. “For now.”

Well, Obi-Wan had come this far.

“Alright.”

“Do you,” Anakin thundered, shifting so suddenly that Obi-Wan flinched at the movement, the harsh twist of Anakin’s torso, “want to die? Do you want me to kill you, you idiot? Why did you help me?”

Obi-Wan was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know,” he whispered, and bowed his head forward. The tears he’d denied himself for years were rushing forward again, as if allowing them before meant he couldn’t stop them now. His eyes were wet, but his cheeks weren’t yet. “You asked for help. You asked, and I couldn’t…”

Anakin scoffed. “You’re weak. You do not require the will to do what you believe you must. You have failed.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan said quietly. 

“Why?” Anakin demanded again. The air vibrated with anger and hate and suffering, and Obi-Wan’s head swam with memories of Padmé’s pained cries as the Force had rang with the deaths of thousands of Jedi. He pressed a hand to his forehead as it thumped in agony.

There is good in him, her ghost whispered as her children drew their first breaths. 

Obi-Wan shook his head. He’d lost the belief that anything resembling light could still come from Anakin. He’d seen too much, felt too much, and the Dark Side always twisted whatever it could. It had had Anakin for a decade; it had let him stew in his pain and anger, and had used him to produce more pain and anger for others.

But Obi-Wan still lived, for whatever reason, and he didn’t know what it meant.

“Why don’t you tell me what you need from me?” Obi-Wan said slowly. He let his head fall back against the pristinely white wall, absentmindedly plucking dirt from under his fingernails. He desperately needed a shower. And food. And water. All the essentials.

Anakin glowered. That seemed to be his default expression.

“It’s your ship,” he said. It nearly sounded petulant. “And I am not fully healed. I need a more advanced medical bay to—to do all that the droid said. The new lung.” He was quiet for a moment. “I require the new lung.”

“Hm.”

“You,” Anakin said with clear vexation, “have not become any more forthcoming.”

“Less, probably,” Obi-Wan told him, and rolled his shoulders experimentally. A joint cracked, and he grimaced. He was nearing fifty, he considered, and for a Jedi, that was nothing in years. Still, the desert had aged him prematurely, and he was well aware of it. The exile and loneliness made it all the worse.

“I could still kill you,” Anakin threatened.

Obi-Wan sighed. “You could.”

“Perhaps I will.”

“I have the feeling,” Obi-Wan murmured, “that if you were going to kill me, you would already have done so. I’m not sure why you haven’t, to be honest. So much effort to catch me, so many lives wasted, so much destruction, only so that you could make me suffer. Is that why you wait? I haven’t suffered enough?”

Anakin’s voice, when it came, was icily cold, hard and unforgiving. “You think you understand the meaning of suffering. You don’t. All your hurt, all your pain, combined together, is a mere cut to the finger in comparison to what you did to me.”

Perhaps a part of him expected to cry again, but maybe he’d finally run out of tears to offer. The same numbness set in that he’d felt before, and he didn’t even recoil at Anakin’s words. It would have been kinder to kill Anakin. He did not doubt it.

He’d let him burn only because Obi-Wan couldn’t bear the thought of putting a lightsaber through his heart, and he’d wanted to let lava finish what he couldn’t; it had been a kindness only to himself. They both were paying the price of that weakness even now.

“I just couldn’t do it,” Obi-Wan said. He was hollow, emptied out. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let it be me who did it. I still can’t.”

Anakin didn’t say anything, but that ice still lingered, folding around him like an impenetrable wall. Obi-Wan sat for a few more moments, composing himself. His legs were made of lead as he stood again, and looked at Anakin. Anakin did not respond; did not even watch Obi-Wan anymore. He had turned away, staring down at the broken mask that had concealed his face for ten years.

Obi-Wan left.

~*~

Obi-Wan showered. He drank. He ate.

Bail, in the short time he’d had to prepare the Sundered Heart, had done an outstanding job with its supplies. There was enough food, both fresh and packaged, to last two men at least a month. A few datapads filled with novels were scattered around the ship. There were feather-soft beds with fresh linen and an additional service droid to clean after them in three bedrooms that were at least as large as his cave on Tatooine had been. In the communal living space, there was even a board set up to play dejarik. 

And there was tea. Nabooian herbal tea, Coruscanti dark tea, Alderaanian floral tea, even the soft, green tea that came from Chandrila that had been a delicacy even before the Clone Wars. A whole kitchen cabinet was stocked with it.

Not that Obi-Wan made use of it. The service droid also delivered meals three times a rotation—or what passed for a rotation as they sat in space; the clocks followed Alderaan’s twenty-six hour system—to the bedroom door. 

The Sundered Heart had three bedrooms, and Obi-Wan had taken the one that was meant for the pilot near the control room. The other two sat at the far end of the ship, with the hangar and the communal spaces in between. The med-bay was next to the hangar, further down the back. The bedrooms all had small but tidy freshers connected to them, and so Obi-Wan hid himself away.

There was really nothing much he could say to Anakin regardless. He felt him in the Force, a disturbance that set him on edge with its tenacious anger, its biting frustration and pain. Anakin hardly felt anything else, or if he did, it was overshadowed by those two continuous emotions. Obi-Wan’s shields were tighter than he’d bothered to make them in years, and he meditated nearly constantly in between meals.

The only real consolation he allowed himself was a single cup of tea every morning. 

It was not a tenable situation, of course. It was running away from an untenable situation at best, and it was sheer cowardly stupidity at worst. 

It had been four rotations since their last conversation in the med-bay. Obi-Wan’s hands were curled around a fragile blue mug of Coruscanti tea, letting it warm his hands, as he sat cross-legged on the floor leaning against the smooth curves of the bed frame. A datapad laid before him, ready to be read, and he felt, if not relaxed, at least somewhat calm. Somewhat content. 

And then, of course, Anakin stalked into his bedroom with blazing eyes, lifting his fingers to shatter Obi-Wan’s mug. Its contents splattered over his thighs, and Obi-Wan hissed in a combination of pain and surprise. Anakin wasted no time in grabbing him by the throat, shoving him against the wall so hard that the air left Obi-Wan’s lungs quite thoroughly, and his legs dangled under him uselessly. He grabbed at Anakin’s mechanical hands, trying to pry apart his fingers, but Anakin did not relent.

Maybe he’d changed his mind about needing Obi-Wan. 

“What is your plan?” Anakin snarled. “You sit here, day after day, and you do not move. You do not speak. We are floating in space, no purpose in mind, even while my Master searches the galaxy for me!”

Obi-Wan gasped as Anakin dropped him, doubling over in pain. 

“I don’t know,” he croaked, once his voice worked again.

Anakin threw the datapad at the wall right above Obi-Wan’s head, and its wiring and casing clattered against his shoulders and back. The Dark Side coiled around Anakin like a serpent, tightening itself around his neck, and Obi-Wan shivered as it brushed against him like a blade over skin.

“You always have a plan, you stupid old man,” Anakin roared at him. “Why are you waiting? What are you doing? If this is how you wish to kill me—”

Melodramatic, a part of Obi-Wan’s brain whispered. He winced. He had clearly forgotten to factor in Anakin’s impatience when he hid himself away. It had become second nature to move slowly and attempt to ignore the lot that the universe had in mind for him. Of course, Anakin wouldn’t allow him to.

He tried to swallow a few times, carefully rubbing his throat. It would bruise, he didn’t doubt, but at least he was still able to talk. “I didn’t have a plan.”

“Liar,” Anakin snarled.

“Do you think I planned for any of this?” Obi-Wan snapped. He was still on his knees, and Anakin towered above him. “I expected you to kill me on that moon. I expected you to kill me afterwards, even. You asked for help. Did you think that I could have factored that into my plans, Anakin?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Darth Vader, then,” Obi-Wan continued, hoarse and angry and upset. “You think my suffering is nothing compared to yours, but you were the one who chose your fate, and no one else! Everyone else was just dragged along in your insanity, in your madness and anger. Younglings. Younglings. And now the ones who aren’t dead are Fallen or hunted down or tortured for information, and still you pretend to be the victim!”

“You hacked off my limbs,” Anakin shrieked.

“You destroyed the Jedi Order,” Obi-Wan yelled back, and his shoulders slumped as all the fight left him. 

Had he not imagined this conversation a thousand times in that first year he’d been on Tatooine? There had been little to do but replay every single moment of the Clone Wars, or even Anakin’s apprenticeship before that, and wonder where Obi-Wan had gone so terribly astray. He ached to know what he should’ve said, what he should’ve done, to keep Anakin firmly tied to the Light. He had wanted to ask Anakin where it had all gone wrong, and he feared the answer despite how desperately he craved to know. He’d imagined pleading, shouting, apologising, all of it.

And now he recalled none of the words he’d so cautiously chosen every time he had imagined this conversation, and remembered none of the carefully-crafted arguments. Because in the end, it all came down to one thing only. It had been Anakin’s choice.

And there was not a single answer Anakin could offer him that would make Obi-Wan understand.

“They were liars, too,” Anakin said, but somehow, his anger had quietened too. It still revolted under the surface, Obi-Wan could sense it; but somehow it was leashed. He hadn’t thought Anakin was capable of that. He certainly hadn’t been even before his Fall. “Hypocrites and murderers who supported a Senate that was rife with corruption. Democracy is a sham, and the universe is better off without the Jedi.”

“They were all I had,” Obi-Wan whispered. 

“Because they stole you from your family!” Anakin insisted, and grabbed Obi-Wan by the shoulder to haul him up forcefully. Sharp pain travelled up his spine. “You still can’t see, despite all these years? The Order broke up families even as they claimed to be compassionate! They refused to let anyone love anything simply because they were afraid of the consequences! They chained you, enslaved you, and they did it to you when you were young enough so that they could make you think you wanted it! The Order was evil.”

“And now?” Obi-Wan’s voice was hoarse with tears. He didn’t care. “What has your Empire done to fix anything, Darth Vader? How much love was left for you after you ruined the lives of everyone who ever cared for you? The Order would have let you walk away. You had a choice, and you chose, over and over—”

“I didn’t know better,” Anakin said. His hand was still digging into the soft flesh of Obi-Wan’s shoulder, and he shoved him off. The tears were streaming freely, his nose full and his head heavy with righteous indignation and unrelenting grief. “The Emperor showed me—”

“He showed you nothing,” Obi-Wan said quietly. Anakin didn’t move towards him again, but his hand was still half-lifted as if he wanted to grab Obi-Wan again; either by the throat or by the shoulder to shake sense into him, Obi-Wan didn’t know. “I don’t know what he said. I don’t know what he promised you. But you are more a slave now than you’ve ever been.”

“He promised me life,” Anakin said tightly. His hand was forming into a fist.

Obi-Wan’s lips twitched into a humourless smile. “It’s working out well for you.”

“Not mine.” Anakin was crying, too. Silent, more angrily than anything, tears rolling over scars and landing on his mask where they dispersed quickly. “Padmé’s. My child’s. Those were the lives he promised me.”

Obi-Wan could have made a snide comment, but Padmé’s death was stuck in his mind, too, always paired with a wave of regret and desolation. So instead he bowed his head so he didn’t have to see the manifestation of Anakin’s pain, and listened as Anakin’s footsteps drifted further away. Obi-Wan pressed his eyes closed, and let himself fall back to his knees. A shard of his tea mug buried itself in his skin, and it was a welcome distraction.

~*~

The service droid started cleaning up without any exclamation of surprise after it dropped off lunch and, unfortunately, activated the medical droids. Obi-Wan only learnt this when they came to forcefully lead him to the med-bay. There was an override, apparently, that even he couldn’t turn off. He was too tired to argue with the droids. 

It felt a little bit like how the clones would bait him into going to the medics after a particularly hard battle, the way Cody would click his tongue at him in tacit disapproval when Obi-Wan waited too long for a check-up. Except it was nothing alike; the droids were cold and lifeless, mechanical in their movements as they removed the ceramic fragments of the shattered tea mug from his knees and palms and cleaned the wounds before applying their bacta patches. They treated the burn wounds on his thighs, too, and Obi-Wan just listlessly stared at the ceiling as he, half-nude, was prodded and poked.

“Two broken ribs,” one of the droids informed him flatly. “Estimate of a recovery period of thirty-seven days. An ice pack will be applied now.”

It followed not a second later, and Obi-Wan frowned at the sharp coldness that settled against his back. He’d rather have the heat pack, but he supposed that wouldn’t do much for the swelling. 

Anakin appeared before the glass wall. The hairs on Obi-Wan’s arms stood up involuntarily at the Darkness Anakin wore as a second skin when he slowly entered the med-bay, and once again he tracked Obi-Wan like losing sight of him for a second might mean that he would float away. Obi-Wan self-consciously wrapped an arm around himself.

“Full medical report,” he said coldly.

“Second-degree burns on left and right upper leg and thighs,” the droid began. “Two broken ribs and suspected bruising of a third. Low blood sugar. Patient shows signs of long-term dehydration and starvation and lack of access to appropriate healthcare, as indicated by an untreated fracture in the upper right arm with a suspected age of four years. Additionally—”

“Aren’t these supposed to be private?” Obi-Wan asked mildly. He had let his head fall back again, leaning on his palms despite the bandages wrapped around them. 

The droid turned to him and beeped. “Patient: Kenobi, Obi-Wan, Jedi Knight. Emergency contact and medical proxy is listed as Skywalker, Anakin, Jedi Knight.”

“Well,” Obi-Wan sighed. “I suppose I should’ve updated that, but I didn’t think to be in a situation where that ever mattered again. Can I update it now? Leave it blank.”

“Denied,” the droid said flatly. 

“Continue the report,” Anakin said.

“Additionally, medical records are out of date. Last medical treatment of Kenobi, Obi-Wan, was found to be ten years ago. Mental illnesses were logged and have gone untreated. Suspicions of depression, panic attacks, insomnia. Immediate therapy and medication recommended. Patient should be considered a risk to himself.”

He’d cut the thing in half before he even realised he’d taken out his lightsaber. It hummed in his hand, and Obi-Wan blinked as the lower half of the droid sparked with a last burst of electricity and the upper half smoothly slid down to the floor.

The second droid wasn’t perturbed by the loss of the first one. “Patient log updated: Kenobi, Obi-Wan. Anger issues and emotional instability detected.”

“I’m not,” Obi-Wan seethed, “a risk to myself.”

The droid didn’t move. “Assessment denied.”

“I should have known this would be more torturous for you than any actual pain,” Anakin said flatly. “Put away the lightsaber, Obi-Wan. Unless you’re planning on destroying more droids, but I would advise against that course of action.”

Obi-Wan gritted his teeth as he hung his lightsaber back on his belt. The droid pushed the ice pack against his back again, and Obi-Wan remained stubbornly quiet through the pain and the embarrassment that was heating up his neck. Anakin hadn’t moved, still in a way that he’d never mastered when Obi-Wan had known him, simply assessing him through sparse, thin eyelashes.

It had been difficult being around Anakin before, with all the anger and hatred that hung around him, but now it felt as if Obi-Wan would break under the force of it. It wanted to drag him down along with it, plunge him into the depths that Anakin was drowning in. Obi-Wan took a steady breath, trying to focus inwards instead of outwards. 

“Heartbeat dropping,” the droid said. “Stress levels are lowering.”

“You didn’t use to meditate like that,” Anakin said.

“I didn’t have to,” Obi-Wan answered. He kept his eyes closed. “Why are you here?”

“You think I can be saved.”

Obi-Wan cracked open one eye, then another. “Not really.”

Anakin’s face twisted in frustration. “It’s the only answer that satisfies the question. You offered me help because you think you can revive Anakin Skywalker. You confirmed your inability to kill me out of emotional attachment to a person who died years ago. But you are more rational than that, and attachment is not something you are capable of.”

Obi-Wan considered that answer. “You think I am so rational-minded that I would have no trouble killing you?”

“Not after what you have seen me do,” Anakin said. He crossed his arms. It still felt as though he was reigning in his emotions. The conversation was tense, of course, but at least they weren’t shouting. And, Obi-Wan considered with a tinge of tired humour, they were already in the med-bay if Anakin were to attack him again.

“I’ve been wrong about you before,” he said. “Perhaps I am again. Perhaps I never really knew you as well as I liked to think I did. It certainly turns out you understood very little of me if you thought me capable of being quite so cold-blooded. I begged Yoda to leave me to deal with Sidious instead of you.” Obi-Wan huffed out a wistful breath at the thought. “I suppose at least both you and I would have been thoroughly dead.”

Anakin’s eyes narrowed. “You seemed to have no trouble fighting me.”

“You were killing Padmé,” Obi-Wan said. 

“Don’t you dare talk about—”

“She died aboard this ship,” Obi-Wan said. It was cruel of him, and he knew it was. But Anakin had been cruel, too, cruel for many years and on behalf of Obi-Wan, and perhaps Anakin needed to know that his suffering had been of his own making. “I carried her inside. I was the one who was here when the droids told me she couldn’t be saved. I was the one who held her hand as she passed away. I was the one who heard her last words. I was the one who found that necklace you’d made for her as a boy and told them to bury it with her, because she loved you, because you killed her, and still she loved you. And I couldn’t even be at her funeral.”

Anakin’s emotions flared again, but anger wasn’t what won out. Grief filled up the room, so heavy that it threatened to crush him, and Anakin fell to his knees, hands in front of his eyes as his shoulders trembled. And so, love won out over hate, as Anakin wept for the wife he’d lost.

“It should’ve been me,” he cried out. “Why wasn’t it me?”

“She still believed there was good in you,” Obi-Wan said quietly. He hesitated for a long, meaningful moment, and then made a decision. He shoved himself off the examination table and dropped down before Anakin, and gathered him in his arms. Anakin didn’t push him away; instead, he put his face in the crook of Obi-Wan’s neck.

“There isn’t,” Anakin said in a whisper, like a child, like the boy that Obi-Wan had raised, except there were only thick, half-healed scars where once had sat a heart. “There isn’t. I killed all of it.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan said, and sat on his aching knees for a long time.

Eventually, Anakin pushed him away and turned on his heels. Obi-Wan stayed where he was, in between the broken bits of a medical droid he’d destroyed in anger, his head reeling with the question of what Anakin was.

Not a Sith, he thought with dawning horror. Not quite a Sith; nearly, but not yet. Not while he held onto the memory of Padmé.

~*~

Obi-Wan decided not to avoid Anakin anymore. For one, it wasn’t a productive use of either of their time; not that Obi-Wan’s time had been productive in ten years, but Anakin’s reminder that he had a Sith Lord who’d want him back made his skin itch. Secondly, he had no desire to be thrown into a wall again. His ribs could only take so much.

And, perhaps, there was something of Anakin left. In a way, the anger and grief had been there in the nine-year-old boy who had been Obi-Wan’s apprentice too; it had spun out of control, yes, taking over all other emotions, but grief—grief wasn’t inherently dark. Obi-Wan grieved every day of his life and he was still firmly tethered to the Light.

Maybe he wasn’t emotionally healthy, but he wasn’t likely to go on a murder spree.

So many things had been said between them in the past couple of days, and so many others had been left unsaid, that Obi-Wan found it difficult to find an equilibrium. He decided to take his morning tea in the communal rooms even as he used his datapad to read up on the political and economical status of several Inner Rim planets that he’d once known like the back of his hand.

He didn’t have to look up to find Anakin hovering; the shaky tendrils of Darkness announced his presence quite well.

“We are in need of a plan,” Obi-Wan said without looking up. “But I don’t know the inner workings of most of the Core planets at this stage. I’m not sure where we can go so that your Emperor won’t find us.”

Anakin sagged in the chair opposite him. It creaked under the weight of his suit, and a dark glove came into Obi-Wan’s view as Anakin whisked away the datapad he’d been reading from under his nose. “You surprise me. I always suspected you were part of the Rebellion. That seemed more like you than running away.”

Obi-Wan didn’t respond as Anakin skimmed over the list of planets.

“Well?” Obi-Wan asked drily. “Which one is most likely to give you a new lung without turning you over to your new Master?”

Anakin’s yellow eyes on him were becoming familiar. Today, they weren’t particularly brimmed with hate, but there was something uneasy and dark in them nonetheless. “None in the Inner Rim. Their scanners are too accurate, and there are too many traitors who would give me up without a second’s thought to advance their own position.”

“You still haven’t told me why you’re so eager to get away from him,” Obi-Wan said, keeping his tone neutral as he took back the datapad. 

Anakin snorted; through his new mask, it sounded a little like a cough. “Don’t pretend you’re interested in my wellbeing now.”

“Did I or did I not risk my own safety to get you to this point?” Obi-Wan pointed out. He thought that mentioning the way Anakin had unexpectedly broken down in his arms was probably not beneficial to their current conversation.

“I suppose you think I should get over the way you cut off my limbs,” Anakin said, icily cold, and nodded at the datapad. “You always were so eager to make plans. But you haven’t thought this one through, have you?”

“This defection is something you’ve been considering,” Obi-Wan said slowly. Anakin’s face remained the same impassive neutral—well, as neutral as he could be while he was this close to scowling. “Why?”

“I’ll answer,” Anakin said, and leaned back, crossing his arms. “If you do the same.”

“Are we going to scream again?” Obi-Wan asked, and rubbed his temple before letting his head rest on his palm. His hair felt coarse despite the daily showers he now enjoyed—ten years of sand would do that, he assumed, although perhaps that wasn’t the cause. Anakin’s hair, when he’d been nine, had always been silk-soft in between Obi-Wan’s fingers as he’d helped him with his Padawan braid.

Maybe it was just age.

“Perhaps we could’ve used some more screaming before,” Anakin said mildly. “Before my Fall. You drove me to madness with how calm you’d always be.”

Obi-Wan sighed. “You had enough to deal with on your own. I didn’t think going to you with my problems was going to be helpful.”

“So who did you go to?” 

“Is that your question?” Obi-Wan asked, bemused despite himself. A month ago, he’d been in his cave on Tatooine, going days without talking. It was odd to sit opposite Anakin, talking amiably enough that it wouldn’t have been out of place ten years ago. “No one, really. I’ve always preferred to work out things for myself. But when I didn’t, I went to Yoda. Mace, Plo. Occasionally Cody, when the war got to me.”

People who were all dead with the exception of Yoda, who he hadn’t seen since he had last been on this ship. Cody might still live—Obi-Wan didn’t want to ask. Even if Cody lived, if any of the clones he’d once served with had survived, they wouldn’t be—

Hang on.

“You thought of something,” Anakin said, watching him carefully.

“Kamino,” Obi-Wan breathed out. “They’re so far removed from the rest of the galaxy, I doubt the Empire has much presence there. What could they possibly have that is of interest now that the Clone Wars are over?”

Anakin tilted his head in thought. “The facilities were left alone, as far as I’m aware.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t present for many of the early decisions that my Master made. I spent most of the beginning of the Empire in a bacta tank.”

“Not nearly enough,” Obi-Wan retorted. At Anakin’s resentful look, he continued, “I know, it’s my fault. You know enough about bacta to realise that you would have regained much of your lung function if they’d cloned a lung right away, of course? And limbs aren’t much harder to replace, even if it’s all of them. He healed you halfway and stuck you in a suit you’d require for the rest of your life.”

Anakin glowered, the Dark once again assembling around him. “The pain makes me stronger. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains—”

“—are broken, yes. I know the Sith code, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said with no little fatigue. They weren’t shouting, but that didn’t make this line of conversation much more bearable. He didn’t want to discuss Padmé again, nor make Anakin an emotional whirlwind every time they spoke, but it was the only time Anakin seemed to make any sense to him.

“I can’t be a slave to him any longer,” Anakin gritted out. “That is the answer to your question, Obi-Wan. He broke his promises, and so I mean to kill him. It is the way of the Sith.”

Obi-Wan considered it. He wasn’t so sure Anakin was cunning enough to be Emperor, not in the way Sidious had proven to be, but Anakin was certainly powerful. Would be even more powerful if Obi-Wan kept helping him with his health. Was Anakin a better option than Sidious? 

It led to a dark path, asking himself these questions, a slippery slope he couldn’t quite evade. Obi-Wan had no right putting one Sith above another, really, and his entire moral philosophy revolted at the thought. It wasn’t Obi-Wan’s responsibility to make decisions for the galaxy. That was what they had democracy for; a system in which Anakin didn’t believe.

The other option was to part ways with Anakin now, and Obi-Wan couldn’t quite bear the thought. 

“I don’t believe that pain makes you stronger,” Obi-Wan said instead. “I don’t think you believe it yourself, or you would’ve made your peace with the suit.”

Anakin glared at him. Obi-Wan wasn’t nearly as impressed by it anymore. 

“I’m not sure if Kamino is still inhabited,” Anakin said flatly when Obi-Wan remained quiet. “But if they are, the Emperor is sure to have control over them. It’s not safe.”

“It’s safer than any other planet.”

Anakin’s eyes were heavy on him. “I’m not a fool, Obi-Wan. The friend you called, the one whose ship this is. I know it is Bail Organa’s. The Empire keeps a close eye on all the Senators who once opposed him. And the Third Sister explained her plan to lure you to me. Organa’s daughter—”

Don’t talk about her, Obi-Wan prayed, and exhaled, tightening his shielding. “What do you want me to do?”

“Contact Organa,” Anakin said. “He will have a medical facility.”

“And you think he can keep everyone’s mouths shut?” Obi-Wan asked in disbelief. “No. I won’t do it. The Empire has risked Bail’s family enough in the last few weeks, and I won’t do it on behalf of the man who had his daughter kidnapped. It’s Kamino or nothing, Anakin. Decide.”

For a second, Obi-Wan thought Anakin would assault him again. His spine prickled in anticipatory pain, and his nails dug harshly into his own palms. 

“My child would have been around her age,” Anakin said, and looked away. “We will go to Kamino.”

He thought his baby was dead, Obi-Wan realised. He’d been so relieved that he hadn’t had to fend off any questions about Luke or Leia that he hadn’t thought about what their absence meant. Anakin hadn’t only worried for Padmé. He didn’t grieve only his wife.

Obi-Wan swallowed and forced his body to unwind. “I’ll set the course,” he said.

~*~

There were no innocuous conversations with Anakin, Obi-Wan found out quickly, even when he attempted his best to keep their interactions as superficial as they could possibly be. Conversations with Anakin were akin to walking around shards of glass with bare feet and covered eyes; one had no possibility of seeing where to tread safely and was inevitably left to bleed with every step.

They played dejarik while the Sundered Heart sat in hyperspace. Obi-Wan had once taught Anakin, but they’d rarely played even as friends; Anakin didn’t have the temper for it and Obi-Wan somehow never managed to lose on purpose, and he’d tried.

“You would’ve made a good Sith,” Anakin said apropos of nothing, and Obi-Wan choked on air.

“I would not,” he said in affront, and stole another one of Anakin’s pieces he’d debated letting him have for the insult. 

“Sidious tells me about it, sometimes,” Anakin continued, as if Obi-Wan hadn’t spoken at all. His yellow eyes were intently focused on the board, which was a welcome change from the way he’d been staring at Obi-Wan. “He does it to make me angry, listing all my flaws. He says it’s to teach me, but I know it’s not.”

Obi-Wan’s nostrils flared in displeasure. “He talks about me?”

“Not just you,” Anakin said offhandedly. “He compares me to Maul and Dooku sometimes. But they were failures, so it doesn’t bother me. They lost their place, and I kept mine. He likes to bring up potential apprentices when he is angry with me, but there’s not much he can say about them, because I’d just have them killed if they came close to me.”

He said it with such disregard. Obi-Wan’s chest tightened and he kept his eyes on the game, but the pieces were growing slightly blurry. 

“Did you kill Reva?” he asked quietly, even though he didn’t want to know. He was complicit in her death, if Anakin had. At Anakin’s questioning glance, he bitterly added, “Third Sister.”

“Why would you care?” Anakin asked, eyebrows raised. It tugged at his scars, and then he looked downward again, moving his karkath in an obvious play to win Obi-Wan’s strider. “But yes. I did.”

Obi-Wan breathed out. “She was from the Temple, once.”

“I know,” Anakin said, and continued. “I hated it when Sidious compared you to me. He considered you for the position when you killed Maul, but he says you would’ve been too much effort to turn to the Dark Side, and you weren’t strong enough in the Force for his liking. I think he’s bitter about it now, though. You would’ve been a worthy apprentice. You’re much more like Sidious than I ever was.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Obi-Wan snapped.

Anakin’s lips twisted in a vicious little smile as he looked at Obi-Wan with hooded eyes. “I’m an attack dog on a leash. I didn’t mind. Mindless rage was a good distraction for many years, but it became dangerous to rely on Sidious like that. You’ve always had a mind for games like these and you’ve always been an achieved liar. I can kill Sidious, but I can’t take his place. I know that.”

“No one should,” Obi-Wan said. Anakin was baiting him, he was sure of it, but he had suddenly lost all his appetite for the game. It had seemed such a harmless way of spending time together, but he should’ve known better. 

Anakin’s mind was poisoned by the Dark that swirled around him, and Obi-Wan knew better than anyone else how it longed to drag others with it. Obi-Wan didn’t want to give into any more anger than he already had.

“You could help me,” Anakin said in a deceptively off-handed tone.

“Who’s playing games now?” Obi-Wan said tiredly. In about five more moves, he could win the game, but there was no satisfaction in it. He had taken pride in his mind, once upon a time, the resourcefulness with which he always managed to calculate a path to victory. It had made him an accomplished General; it had seen him rise the ranks of the Jedi when sheer power never would have; it made him a cunning opponent with both his lightsaber and his words.

But that had been many years ago, and now much of that acumen had blunted with disuse. Playing dejarik had been a fun diversion, a reminder of old times. It had been a mistake. He stood up; his pieces disconnected as he turned off the board.

“Sensitive subject?” asked Anakin demurely.

Obi-Wan could never hate him, not even when Anakin became more inhuman than ever, a cutting contrast to the boy who would never have been able to toy with his emotions so deviously. It’d have made things much simpler if Obi-Wan could hate him. Instead, Obi-Wan’s lungs overflowed with remorse and guilt and loathing and the constant, desperate wish to take Anakin by his shoulders and shake out the twisting roots of Darkness that had planted itself inside his apprentice’s heart.

“In some games,” he said harshly, “it is better to lose.”

~*~

The nights were most bearable. Obi-Wan still had nightmares, although they were more abstract than they had ever been; about Leia and Luke and Anakin and the guttural rasping of Vader’s voice, “Help me,”; about being choked and feeling so conflicted about the dreadful relief it brought. He wandered the ship on nights like those, aware the medical droids noted every moment of insomnia and were keeping track of his sleeping habits. They probably heard him scream as he woke up.

Anakin probably did, too.

But at night, the ship was cold and empty and Anakin, if he slept at all—and sometimes, Obi-Wan was sure he didn’t—kept to his own company. It was a relief not to have to talk to him in the minutes when the night terrors still grasped at his raw emotions and his breathing ran ragged, his ribs hurting where they were fractured.

And in the morning, neither of them asked the other how the night had been.

~*~

Kamino was as drearily grey as it had been the first time Obi-Wan had come here. It felt like a lifetime ago, the events that had led to the Clone Wars, and his own innocent stupefaction when he’d found the clones.

It was a lifetime ago, he considered. Thirteen long years divided that Obi-Wan Kenobi and this one. They were not the same individual; he doubted anyone who had been part of the war was.

“You have to stay with them at all times,” Anakin said. He had grabbed Obi-Wan’s arm in an uncharacteristic show of nerves, his metal fingers digging painfully. “If the Kaminoans inform the Emperor, he will not delay in coming for me. For us both.”

Obi-Wan winced. “I know.”

“Promise me you won’t let him get me,” Anakin insisted. His voice was frantic. Obi-Wan wondered if he’d lost some of the ability to even out his tone when he’d gotten used to the voice modulator in his old suit. 

Obi-Wan didn’t really see what he could do about the Emperor if he did come. Yoda had fought him and lost, and Obi-Wan was no longer in the prime of his life nor gifted enough with the Force to face him in that area. If the Emperor came, Obi-Wan would be dead.

“I promise,” Obi-Wan said evenly, because Anakin had called him a liar before, and it was hardly polite to deny him a lie when he needed one. Anakin knew as well as Obi-Wan that there was nothing in his power to stop Sidious; it was a fairytale that he wanted to be told.

Despite that, Anakin’s fingers relaxed. 

“Thank you,” he said. There was something lighter in the yellow of his eyes, like molten honey in the sun. It nearly flattered his face. 

They landed on Kamino in the stolen ship from Da’kla-Tis, rain violently clattering against the windows. Obi-Wan wrapped his cloak around him and looked at Anakin, whose face was tense, with brows dipping low in his face and his gaze as stormy as the weather outside.

And then he stepped out, and Obi-Wan followed him. No one came to greet them outside, but a Kaminoan he didn’t know was waiting inside, their expression bland as they focused on Anakin first. The suit, even without its helmet, was distinctive. Obi-Wan let his hood fall deeply over his face, hoping to mask his features.

“Lord Vader,” they said. “What an unexpected surprise. It has been so long since we have had a visit from the Empire. What can I do for you?”

“I require medical assistance,” said Anakin. His voice had deepened to imitate Vader’s. “I need a cloned lung to replace a faulty one.” He hesitated for a second. “And there are other details. I brought a report from a medical droid to inform you of my requirements.”

The Kaminoan blinked. “Of course,” it said agreeably. “And your companion?”

Obi-Wan ducked his head lower. “He is here to oversee the procedure,” Anakin said in irritation. “What is your name?”

“Gavali Dar, Lord Vader.”

“Make your arrangements, Gavali Dar,” Anakin said, and handed the chip over with the information he’d received from the medical droid of the Sundered Heart. “I suggest that you hurry. I do not like being made to wait.”

“Of course,” Dar agreed. Obi-Wan followed the Kaminoan through the halls of Tipoca City, ignoring the tension in his muscles at the plan. This was a last resort of a plan more than it was anything else, and he had no idea where the Kaminoans stood in relation to the Empire or if they remembered Obi-Wan.

Gavali Dar looked at Obi-Wan, but made no comment as they guided him to the lower levels. Obi-Wan had occasionally been here. Not often, but once or twice, to pick up medical supplies for the clones. The facility seemed empty without them, colourless and lifeless when only the pale-skinned, unrushed Kaminoans populated the city.

Dar explained the situation in two sentences to two of their colleagues. Neither of them responded with an emotion other than curbed and polite puzzlement, and Obi-Wan had to decide who to tail as Dar went one direction and the other two in another.

He decided to stick with Dar as they went to prepare the medical facility.

“Lord Vader asks for a repair to his physical body rather late,” Gavali Dar said as they took place behind several screens that were already flashing the requirements of the surgery. “It was my understanding that he had a suit personally made to overcome his injuries.”

Obi-Wan said nothing.

Dar continued, “Of course, we are always pleased to assist the Empire. Although I must admit my surprise at Lord Vader’s appearance on Kamino. Coruscant is still the Emperor’s base of operations, is it not?”

“It’s not my place to say,” Obi-Wan said curtly. “You have your orders, Gavali Dar.”

“Of course,” Dar said smoothly, and focused on the screens before them. Obi-Wan folded his hands behind his back as he watched the operation table. A glass screen divided the room he’d found himself in and the surgery theatre. The two Kaminoans that Dar had spoken to earlier appeared there after a few minutes of waiting, alongside Anakin.

“We will have to remove the suit and induce an artificial coma, Lord Vader,” one of them explained patiently. “After your lung has been cloned, we will replace the damaged one. We will work on creating suitable replacements for your limbs while your lung grows.”

The Dark swirling around Anakin was familiar, but it felt a little desperate now. Anakin was deeply, dangerously afraid. His signature reached out for Obi-Wan, curling around him. Very, very carefully, Obi-Wan tapped against him with his own sense of Light. The Dark and the Light touched, entangling for a moment, and then Anakin withdrew with a breath so deep that Obi-Wan could see how his suit heaved with it.

“How long will it take?” Anakin demanded gruffly.

The Kaminoan considered. “No more than a full rotation, Lord Vader.”

“Do it,” Anakin said. He was already lying back, but one last tendril reached out to Obi-Wan. Help me, Anakin had said, and was saying it again without words. Obi-Wan trembled where he stood, keeping his eyes on Dar’s screens rather than the body before him.

One of the Kaminoans pricked a needle in Anakin’s neck, and the Dark sank away under a slumbering ocean. Obi-Wan watched, lips pressed together so tightly that his mouth was starting to ache, as they removed Anakin’s suit, piece by piece, hooking him up to extensive life support. 

It was hard to watch, but he did not move from his place. Burns covered all of Anakin, not a single patch of smooth, even skin left to be found; his scars were raised and angry and red, and it was no wonder that Anakin was always in pain. The limbs Obi-Wan had cut off were healed stumps attached to numerous wires to connect the suit and his limbic system. The Kaminoans cut it all off with no remarks, removing the machine to leave the man.

Obi-Wan watched as Darth Vader was destroyed, replaced by someone he could not yet give a name to.

~*~

The Kaminoans were rapid. The lung was finished in eighteen hours; the limbs and all the attachments that came with it in twenty. Taut anxiety had Obi-Wan awake for all of them, unwilling to move from his wakeful watch over Anakin’s slumbering form. The Kaminoans gave him a treatment of refined bacta, sending in a horizontal tank to submerge the operation table on which Anakin slept, and additionally gave him a thin, fluid variety of bacta that would run through his veins. It was, Gavali Dar told Obi-Wan in serene tones, an excruciatingly painful procedure when one was awake, but very effective.

It hadn’t been around for the war, was all Obi-Wan knew, and maybe he should be glad of it.

Not even a full rotation after they’d landed on Kamino, Anakin was a strange amalgamation of the Jedi he’d once been and the Sith he’d become. He was still stubbornly bald, his skin still strikingly pale and dry from years cut off from any sun, but the scars had faded. The red irritation of his injuries had disappeared. The Kaminoans had taken off the mask that the medical droids had inserted, and Anakin’s chapped lips were a cold shade of pink as he breathed through his mouth, unaided.

Two silver legs and two silver arms were attached to the remaining stumps of his limbs. Obi-Wan tapped his own hip impatiently as the Kaminoans checked over Anakin’s vital signs and ran tests for any possible infections or complications. One hour passed, then two. The screens hadn’t changed at all.

Obi-Wan’s blood ran cold. The Force screeched at him to move.

“Wake him now,” he said to Gavali Dar through the microphone in the room; Dar was running their fingers over the shining silver of Anakin’s lower right leg, claiming they were assessing the synapses’ firing rate in response to stimuli.

“Extensive evaluations are required—” Dar started.

“Now,” Obi-Wan snapped, and lifted his fingers to shatter the glass that divided him and Anakin. Gavali Dar jumped back, startled, and Obi-Wan grabbed the needle that was filled with the medicine to wake Anakin; he’d picked up one or two things in the war. 

“You can’t wake him!” Dar cried out.

“You let the Emperor know he was here,” Obi-Wan hissed. There was a Dark sensation rolling in the air, so suppressive and unyielding it made him sick to the stomach. It hadn’t arrived on Kamino yet, he thought, but it would soon.

“I was under the impression this was on the Emperor’s order,” Dar said.

Obi-Wan snarled at them and, hoping he got this right, jammed the needle in Anakin’s jugular vein. It took one second, then two, three—and Anakin sat up, eyes wide and breathing hard, his chest heaving. He swallowed, and then he threw up, only just missing Obi-Wan.

They had no time for him to get used to his new limbs. Obi-Wan dragged him up by the pits of his elbows, and Anakin stumbled against him, skin-to-skin. All Anakin wore were black undergarments that were still drenched with the thick, slimy remnants of bacta. He smelled sharply like the antibacterial salves that were used in surgery.

“We need to go, now,” Obi-Wan said, and Anakin slung an arm over Obi-Wan’s shoulder in answer. Dar was calling out to them, but Obi-Wan had no time to listen to his words as he led them towards the bright hallways of Tipoca City, deliriously hoping they’d make it to their ship in time. 

Anakin got more familiar with his limbs quickly, and soon lifted his arm in order to walk for himself. He still wobbled a bit, but it went faster than if Obi-Wan had to drag him, and so he just made sure to keep Anakin in his peripheral vision as he led them up towards the stormy surface. They passed several Kaminoans, but either they weren’t aware of what was happening or they didn’t dare interfere, because no one moved to stop them.

Perhaps it was a good thing there were no clones left here. Obi-Wan had killed enough of them to last him a lifetime.

“He hasn’t arrived in the atmosphere yet,” Anakin said, out of breath and his eyes red-rimmed with both enervation and the irritation of bacta. “I can feel him. He’s angry. They informed him?”

“There’s only so many Kaminoans I can keep an eye on at once, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said in exasperation. They were a floor away from the main level and the hangar. They could’ve taken an elevator, but Obi-Wan didn’t want to take the chance that the Kaminoans would lock them out, so he ran up the stairs instead to try for the door as Anakin trailed behind him, determined but sluggish.

“You couldn’t knock out their communication?”

“There were plenty of Kaminoans to keep their eye on me, too.”

The door was locked. Obi-Wan sighed in frustration and lit up his lightsaber, wasting no time in cutting a hole. The process was slowgoing, and he counted in his head as the seconds passed by; Anakin was breathing raggedly behind him, tension cutting like a knife. The bloodcurdling anger and fear he emitted gave Obi-Wan a headache. It was a Darkness unequal to any that had ever been aimed at Obi-Wan himself. If Anakin hated him, at least it wasn’t half as much as he hated the Emperor.

Finally, the door gave, and the durasteel he’d cut through fell to the floor with a dull thud. Obi-Wan wormed through it and offered a hand to Anakin to tug him along with him. Anakin scowled but took it; his new fingers were cool against Obi-Wan’s.

Their ship was where it had been landed. Obi-Wan’s knees nearly buckled in relief to see it and he ran. The Darkness was crackling around him, and not only Anakin’s. If Obi-Wan hadn’t become so intimately familiar with Anakin’s particular brand of the Dark Side, he wouldn’t be so sure he would still be standing as it pressed down on him, like a finger trying to squeeze a bug. As it was, his vision was woozy and his thoughts were difficult to organise.

The Dark sensed him, too, and it was displeased. Anakin growled and grabbed Obi-Wan roughly; his ribs screamed out in pain and Obi-Wan blinked himself back to the present, gasping hard.

“You’re not his, Obi-Wan,” Anakin bit out, and all but threw Obi-Wan at the ship. “I’ll kill you before I let you be his.”

Obi-Wan pressed open the hatches with clumsy fingers, still trembling. In the distance above them, a dark dot was lowering itself, and he threw himself inside as if that would offer any sort of protection.

The Emperor had come for his wayward apprentice.

“Blast it all,” Obi-Wan said, shaking away the lingering dizziness as Anakin crawled next to him.

“Move,” Anakin barked. His eyes were glowing, and he all but shoved Obi-Wan into the passenger’s seat while he sat down before the controls. “He won’t have us. Never again.”

The ship hissed to life, the engine grumbling under Anakin’s administration. They lifted up in the air smoothly, and then they spun away from that dark spot in the sky. The entire ship trembled in discontent as Anakin pushed it to its limit, and Obi-Wan closed his eyes. “I hate flying with you,” he said.

“Some things never change,” Anakin said darkly, and his nostrils were wide, his eyes blazing with focus and passion as they entered the stratosphere within record time. The Darkness was still trailing, but Anakin had been the GAR’s most skilled pilot, able to achieve decisive victories even in inferior ships. 

The dot became invisible and the Dark slowly dissipated from Obi-Wan’s mind. The space behind his eyes thumped insistently, and he pressed cold fingers against his own lids in an attempt to stave off the lingering ache. It was hard to think.

“Best hurry,” he managed to say. “He may find the Sundered Heart if we don’t move fast enough.”

“I’m on it,” Anakin said tersely, and Obi-Wan didn’t say anything else.

~*~

Anakin steered them back towards Outer Rim territory, leaving them adrift far away from any hyperspace lane or inhabited planet. Obi-Wan hadn’t begun to feel warm since their close encounter with Sidious on Kamino, and even the green tea from Chandrila did nothing to cease the intermittent trembling of his fingers. It tasted like ash in his mouth, and he left a half-full mug to cool on his bedroom floor.

He went to the fresher, but that was even colder, and the hot shower only left him feeling strangely separated from his body, as if his skin were clean but his soul was sullied with a festering evil that could never be washed off. The depths of the Emperor’s anger, even from that distance, felt as unending as the galaxy itself.

It was Anakin who tugged him into the communal space and gave him a red-blue knitted blanket without a word. Anakin himself had taken some of the spare clothes that Bail had included in the supplies, and now wore loose-fitting dark trousers and a crimson, sleeveless tunic. He was a stranger in all ways but for the vestiges of his apprentice’s face.

Obi-Wan stared.

“What?” he managed, and clutched the soft material in between his fingers. 

“You’ll be fine,” Anakin said curtly, and with a second’s hesitation sat down on the floor, back hollowing as he leaned on his elbows to stare at Obi-Wan. “Sidious’ anger overwhelmed you. It’s trying to cling to you, but you will be fine. There isn’t really anything to cling to in you.”

“I don’t understand,” Obi-Wan said helplessly. “Cling to me?”

“He makes his own Darkness stick to you in moments of weakness,” Anakin said, worryingly expressionless. Even this version of Anakin had rarely been this even-tempered, and it only meant there was something lurking under the surface that he had worked harder than usual to conceal. “That is how he gets you to Fall when you are already emotionally unbalanced and weak. But you don’t nearly have enough Darkness in you for it to take root. You need to sit it out, that’s all. Get under the blanket.”

Dutifully, Obi-Wan draped it over himself. The blanket must have been left in Anakin’s compartment. It smelled like the med-bay, for some reason. “Why didn’t it affect you?”

“I’m used to it,” Anakin said, and his lips stretched. It wasn’t a smile, but Obi-Wan couldn’t tell what it was. “I have my own anger to focus on.”

“How healthy,” Obi-Wan said wryly, but chose not to mind Anakin as he slowly folded up his legs under the blanket and let his forehead rest on his knees, the soft material easing an ache in him ignited by Sidious’ near-presence.

“You gave me back my lungs,” Anakin said. His voice was quiet and distant; if Obi-Wan kept his eyes closed and just focused on the silky sensation of the blanket, it was almost as if they were back in Obi-Wan’s quarters in the Temple. Anakin still buzzed, but his anger had frayed at the edges, and something else tempered the hotness of the rage that had been a continuous companion for most of their journey.

But the Temple had fallen alongside Anakin, and that was never a memory that he could forget for long.

“The Kaminoans did,” he said. “I’m the reason you needed new lungs in the first place. And new limbs.”

“I’m well aware,” Anakin said flatly.

Obi-Wan shrugged. The blanket moved with him, and he tucked it under his feet. “And what now? You’re healthy and whole. You’ve betrayed the Emperor. I don’t suppose you have a plan for what’s next?”

“Do you?” 

Obi-Wan cracked open his eyes. Anakin’s focus was solely on him once more, and before Obi-Wan could say a word, the Darkness inched towards Obi-Wan’s shields in much the same way it had done in the medical facility on Kamino. Obi-Wan shuddered again under his blanket at the touch of the Dark Side, but it wasn’t the same heavy pressure of Sidious. Anakin’s Darkness was, Force forbid, familiar. Scorching if it came too close, burning up all around it.

But Anakin had done something to reign it in, had drowned the heat in grief so that it became an ember. When his signature reached out for Obi-Wan’s, asking for permission to touch, to share, it was nearly something bearable.

“What are you doing?” Obi-Wan whispered.

“Breaking my chains,” Anakin said simply, carelessly, like it was nothing more than a lazy afternoon’s stroll. “Let me in. You did it before.”

“You’re Sith,” Obi-Wan protested. “On Kamino you needed the help—”

“I need it now just as much,” Anakin said. Something glinted in his eyes, but the anger didn’t grow. “I promise I’m not going to do anything to you. Obi-Wan. Please. It’ll help you as well.”

Obi-Wan’s indignation rose. “I don’t need—”

“Obi.”

He froze. Anakin used the momentary panic, the swell of sorrowful nostalgia that sat on Obi-Wan’s chest, to seep into his shields. It was much more than the gentle tap of Light against Dark that Obi-Wan had allowed on Kamino; the tornado of all of Anakin’s fear and grief and anger banged against his own, connecting them, tying them together. Dark bled into Light, and Obi-Wan struggled to breathe.

“Ani,” he choked out.

“Right, sorry,” Anakin said, unperturbed. The Dark pulled back with something that was almost a gentle breeze. It sat, unmoving, waiting for Obi-Wan’s return. Obi-Wan poked carefully; the Dark poked back, and achingly slowly let a single vine drip into the Light. Obi-Wan sat back, carefully keeping hold of his own sense of self, as the Dark tugged at a shadowy stain that sat on top. Sidious’ influence on him, Obi-Wan recognised, the taint that was responsible for the cold that had seeped into Obi-Wan’s bones.

Anakin’s Darkness grabbed hold of it and swallowed it for himself, and then he retreated back into his own mind. Obi-Wan’s sense of Light was as strong as it had always been, and he released a shuddering gasp, his heart beating fast from how long he’d held his breath.

“You didn’t need to do that,” Obi-Wan said slowly. His limbs felt warm again, his face flushed from exertion and shame and the blanket that sat so softly against his skin. “That Darkness—”

“It shouldn’t be on you,” Anakin said abruptly, and stood in a fluid motion. “You’re not his. You can never be his, Obi-Wan, I won’t let you.”

Obi-Wan tilted his head in confusion. “Anakin, I don’t understand. You hate me. This entire time, we have been at each other’s throat, unable to hold a civil conversation—”

“That’s how it was before too,” Anakin said, and shook his head. “I don’t expect you to understand. You don’t need to, frankly. You love me, and you’ll stay if I ask you to. Won’t you?”

“I don’t understand where this is coming from,” Obi-Wan said. It felt like his limited understanding of who Anakin had become as a person was slipping from his grasp. They had had a tentative agreement up to this point, but there had been no lingering warmth on Anakin’s side; no fondness, no love, nothing like the possessiveness he was now exhibiting. 

“Darth Vader is dead,” Anakin said tersely. “I killed him, like I once killed Anakin Skywalker. Aren’t you glad? Didn’t you get what you set out to do?”

“I didn’t set out to do anything,” Obi-Wan responded weakly and stood up. The blanket slid down to the sofa that Anakin had forced him on and he turned around in order not to face Anakin; his fingers were trembling again, despite the comfortable temperature. His ribs were aching, and he took two steps to lean forward, his hands resting on the dejarik table.

“Breathe,” Anakin said blithely. A coldly mechanical hand came to rest in between Obi-Wan’s shoulder blades. “You’re panicking. Don’t.”

“Wonderful advice,” Obi-Wan grit out in between rattling breaths, his face flushing with shame and lack of air. He kept his head bowed down so he didn’t have to see Anakin, choosing to focus instead on the solid table under his palms. His legs shook under him, but he held on, steadfast.

The Darkness wrapped itself around him like Anakin’s blanket had, except it wasn’t warm comfort that it offered. Obi-Wan pressed his eyes closed and focused inwards, a false sham of meditation that couldn’t bring him any of the solace he sought when he felt this unbalanced.

“You love me, and it has only brought you pain.” Anakin’s voice was a whisper, his breath prickling against the shell of Obi-Wan’s ear. “Grief and love are two sides of the same emotion, Master. You can’t deny it. Let yourself feel it.”

“Please,” Obi-Wan whispered and had no idea what he was asking.

“Breathe,” Anakin repeated, and then his hand shifted from Obi-Wan’s shoulder to his nape, and he pressed Obi-Wan flush against him similarly to how they had sat in the med-bay days ago, when Anakin had been the one in need of relief.

Obi-Wan cried into Anakin’s neck; clung to him. He had no idea how long it took for the tears to dry up. All he knew was that his face was a wet wreck of salty tears and sweat, and that they’d sagged to the floor together long ago. Anakin’s own breathing was deep, guiding Obi-Wan’s, until they were completely in sync. Obi-Wan’s hands were entangled in Anakin’s crimson tunic; Anakin had one on Obi-Wan’s nape and the other on his back.

Anakin’s fingers dug into him as he sensed Obi-Wan’s return to awareness, wordlessly refusing to break their contact. Anakin, Obi-Wan realised as he shifted on his knees, had not felt another human’s touch for ten years. Had not been embraced until Obi-Wan had done so.

“Anakin,” he said. It was more a croak than a word.

“These days,” Anakin murmured, “I wake up, and the grief is stronger than the rage. And it’s so easy to drown in it, but it’s maybe even more power than anger ever was. I saw you, and all I could do was grieve, Obi-Wan. I loved you, and I hated that you had made me love you. I hated that you never told me you loved me until I hated you.”

“I’m sorry,” said Obi-Wan, soft and aching. “You know I’m sorry.”

Anakin’s hands tightened. Obi-Wan couldn’t see his face, and Anakin’s jaw shifted in order for him to put his head on top of Obi-Wan’s. Obi-Wan let his eyes flutter closed as his nose was forced against Anakin’s bare throat.

“You loved me enough then to love me still,” Anakin murmured. 

Confirmation wasn’t needed. Obi-Wan found himself miserably nodding regardless; his limbs quivered with effort and exhaustion. The day had been long, and he still couldn’t figure out what had become of Anakin now that he’d shed Darth Vader. What remained when there was neither Jedi nor Sith?

It was a question that even the tomes of philosophy in the Temple couldn’t have answered.

~*~

Obi-Wan dreamt of Anakin reaching for him with fingers that were still flesh, soot and dirt clinging to his skin and buried under his nails as he reached for Obi-Wan. “I hate you,” he shouted, and Obi-Wan’s heart had shattered so hard that he felt his grief reverberated through past and future, an infinite sadness that didn’t exist in a single moment but in all of them—

Anakin wore half a mask, and once again he reached for Obi-Wan but his fingers were black and gloved and his breaths came in low, ominous tones. “Help me,” said the man who wasn’t Anakin, and then the suit held a nine-year-old boy with sun-bleached hair and freckles splattered across his fair skin, and he’d pressed his eyes closed in pain so that Obi-Wan didn’t know whether the boy was Anakin or Darth Vader or someone who was neither—

Obi-Wan reached for the child, fingers brushing—

~*~

The bedroom was still dark when he awoke. Obi-Wan only vaguely remembered going to sleep, half-carried by Anakin as he’d stumbled and fallen face-first into a pillow. All his sense of time had evaporated, but his eyes still felt swollen and irritated when he opened them, so he suspected the night hadn’t yet passed.

The outline of Anakin sat against the wall, his legs crossed before him. They gleamed oddly when there was so little light to see by. 

“For ten years,” Anakin started, lifting his chin only a fraction, “I was a mindless killing machine. Oh, not that it’s any sort of absolution. I’m past redemption, Obi-Wan. But I was content to kill my past, because the past is only a reminder of everything that was lost. I miss Padmé every day. The loss of my limbs was nothing compared to the loss of what she was to me.”

Obi-Wan stayed quiet.

Anakin continued unperturbed. “I thought there was no love left in the universe. I had lost all ability for it. All emotions that I ever felt, I replaced with hate. That part was easy.” A moment of pensive silence followed. “I’ve always defaulted to anger. I always felt I was better than everyone else. I was better than most people, of course, but I hated it when I came up short in a comparison. Like the way everyone kept comparing me to you. You were such an impossible standard to reach, and I hated you for that, too. I was stronger than you, and still. Still, I always felt like I failed you.”

“You never had,” Obi-Wan said quietly. “I was always reaching too, Anakin. I always came up short. You never let me forget it, either. I was no Qui-Gon Jinn.”

“Of course you still don’t see it,” Anakin said flatly. Obi-Wan could only see the faintest silhouette of him, dark and unmoving. 

“Maybe,” Obi-Wan allowed, and swallowed. “I suppose I didn’t see a lot of things.”

Anakin hummed noncommittally. “For ten years, there was no love, no trust of any kind. But then you were there, and at first I was so angry that I wanted to rip your bones from your body and watch you burn—” Obi-Wan blinked. “—But then we fought, and your face. You were the past that came back to haunt me, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of everything I’d lost. And all that grief you carried was so much like mine, the sorrow I’d been changing to hate, and you brought it all back just by looking at me. I just—I couldn’t…” Anakin’s silhouette ducked into itself, smaller than he had perhaps ever been.

“It’s alright,” Obi-Wan said. It wasn’t, of course, and it never could be. 

Anakin’s breathing was slow and measured. He sounded nothing like Vader anymore. “You were so easy to hate for so long, because if I’d done something wrong, if I’d failed, it meant that you’d failed me. If your faith in me was misplaced, then it meant that I could blame you for everything I’d ever done wrong.”

“I blame me, too,” said Obi-Wan. He wished he had a better response; an answer that would absolve both Anakin and Obi-Wan’s parts in the events that had led to the rise of the Empire. Anakin should have chosen differently; and equally so, Obi-Wan should’ve guided him well enough to have him choose differently. It was a failure he would always regret.

Anakin sounded irritated. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t know what I meant. Maybe I’ve just spent ten years being frustrated that after everything, all that has happened, I never managed to stop feeling like a failure in your shadow. I don’t understand why I asked for your help.”

There really wasn’t much Obi-Wan could say to that, except for one thing.

“I’m glad you did.”

“Yeah,” Anakin said slowly. “Yeah, me too.”

The ship’s internal clock switched to the morning routine; rather suddenly, the lights in Obi-Wan’s room started to shine gently, mimicking the way the first rays of a sun might arrive on a planet. Obi-Wan sat up and looked at where Anakin sat, the dark shadows on his pale skin and the wry twist of his lips.

The eyes that met Obi-Wan’s were a dull shade of blue, as if they’d forgotten how to be that colour, the rims around the pupil yellow-gold.

~*~

The difficulty was that there still wasn’t much of a plan that Obi-Wan could think of. His initial aim had been to help Anakin regain his health, and that had been achieved. Anakin was going through physical therapy with the help of the monotone medical droids, but he hardly needed to be on the ship for that. He didn’t really need Obi-Wan either.

Anakin’s eyes stayed blue, albeit always encompassed by sickly yellow. Obi-Wan didn’t know what it meant. Anakin had only shrugged when Obi-Wan had hesitantly asked him what he was, and didn’t seem bothered by the change. Maybe he’d known it was coming. The Darkness still shrouded him, but it was, more than ever, grief instead of anger that bolstered it.

It wasn’t any easier to feel. If anything, it suffocated Obi-Wan even more than the anger had done; mindless rage was foreign to him, but he had been unravelled by grief so often that it had become an intimate companion. Sometimes Obi-Wan had difficulty teasing apart his own sorrow and Anakin’s, as they wrapped around each other in a poor pretence of solace and companionship. Misery loves company, went the old adage, but Obi-Wan couldn’t help but worry that their particular sets of misery were orbiting one another only to collide in a spectacularly painful altercation.

There was nothing he feared more than seeing the blue fade from Anakin’s iris again. It was all he dreamt of, without fail, his imagination weaving nightmares of a scarred face snarling with hatred, and a harsh crimson light creating twisted shadows.

There is good in him, Padmé had whispered, and there was; but only through her memory could Obi-Wan tease it out of Anakin. It must be some sort of irony, he supposed, that the fear of Padmé’s death had partly caused Anakin’s Fall, but the grief had created a crack for the Light to trickle back in.

He decided to confront their lack of plan heads-on.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. Anakin was stretching his legs while leaning back against the firm sofa with his back, a determined expression pulling at the faded scars on his face. 

“What were you doing before my Inquisitors came for you?” Anakin inquired, but didn’t look at him. Beads of sweat rested on his forehead as he strained his calves in an upward motion, forcing the mechanical leg upwards.

Obi-Wan pressed his lips together. “You must have made some sort of plan in advance, even if you didn’t account for my presence. Surely, if you thought about leaving the Empire—”

“You still don’t want to answer?” Anakin asked. He lowered his leg back on the sofa to peer intently at Obi-Wan. No matter what he did, apparently Anakin never lost that singular fascination with watching him; Obi-Wan squirmed under his gaze. “You must realise that I have no interest in going after any of your allies. In fact, we might have use of them if they’re part of the Rebellion.”

“I don’t have allies,” Obi-Wan said. “Do you?”

They stared at each other for a long few seconds.

“I want you to stay with me,” Anakin said. His voice was flat; his eyes were not. Every day, the blue shone brighter, clouds dissipating to leave a summer sky. 

Obi-Wan winced. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

The thought of abandoning Anakin on this threshold between Light and Dark was like a blow to the sternum, the force of which rendered him breathless and physically aching, but he saw no path forward in which staying was a viable option. Obi-Wan’s responsibilities were on Tatooine. As it were, he had already been away for too long; it felt like years he had set foot on its endless dunes.

He wondered distantly whether his eopie was doing okay.

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin started. The anger whirled up and died down just as suddenly as Anakin grit his teeth and looked away. “I don’t understand why you want to leave. I’m not a Sith anymore, am I? I want to go after Sidious. Together, we can take him. I don’t see why you don’t want to.” 

“Revenge—”

“Don’t lie,” Anakin snarled. His chest was heaving.

Obi-Wan sat down, staring at Anakin. He hadn’t told Anakin the truth of his children; he had never intended to tell him. Anakin wasn’t Sith, no, but neither had the Darkness left him. He was capable of harnessing it into justice, maybe, but that didn’t make him balanced. 

“Don’t do it for revenge,” Obi-Wan said quietly. “He’s had his claws in you long enough, hasn’t he? I don’t want you to do this out of revenge, Anakin, because you’ll only fall back into Darth Vader, and he won’t let you go this time. I don’t even want you to do this out of grief.”

“There’s nothing else,” Anakin said. He ran a sleeve across his face to get rid of the remaining perspiration. “I’m not looking for absolution. I won’t get it. I don’t need it. It doesn’t matter why we kill Sidious if the end result is his death!”

“It does matter,” Obi-Wan said.

Anakin glowered. “You’re such a Jedi, even now.”

“It matters, because you matter,” Obi-Wan said firmly. “You’ll destroy yourself in the attempt whether you win or lose. You need to do this because you want to make the world a better place, Anakin. You must do it because it’s just, because it’s right. You must do it out of love.”

Anakin laughed. It was a bitter, sad thing; it was a laugh that belonged to someone who had crawled out of the depths of a cave only to find the sun would never rise. “Love. Padmé’s? Yours? She is dead, and you don’t even want to stay. Your love is a damaged thing, Obi-Wan Kenobi. It’s sometimes still hard to decide whether I love or hate you, but I need you. You’re all I have.”

Luke and Leia’s names burned the roof of his mouth in his desire to reassure Anakin that there were things to live for—the same reason that Obi-Wan had found to live, even on the days he didn’t particularly want to. There was hope to be found in the universe on the dreariest, blackest days, and it wasn’t only the new generation of Skywalkers. People still fought for justice. Even when it was difficult, they chose the right path.

If nothing else, Obi-Wan was glad he had been reminded of that.

Obi-Wan slowly, tentatively, reached out with his Light the way Anakin had sometimes extended his tendrils of Dark to help him. The rage stilled, shifting to cold grief again, and loneliness, and something buried deep, gold and glittering—a thread that had once been Anakin Skywalker, and Obi-Wan’s brother; it had once been a nine-year-old boy who loved selflessly.

He kept pouring his love into the swirling Dark that had its talons deep in Anakin’s soul, pulling at the root of grief. The only reason grief had manifested was because of that love, tainted and sullied over the years, twisted beyond recognition to a man who’d gone ten years without a gentle touch against his skin until Obi-Wan had returned.

“We’re both damaged,” Obi-Wan murmured. “And there are things I will never be able to forgive you for, Anakin. Nor you me. But the Force is in all things, and it is also between you and me. It always was. You were my brother. Let me pull you back from the Dark, if I can.”

“You can’t,” Anakin said, strangled.

Obi-Wan shrugged, and retreaded gently from their connection. “Maybe not. Maybe it’s too little and too late. But a sliver of Light is better than none.” 

Anakin emitted a wounded noise and leaned forwards both physically and in the Force. His fingers brushed against the inside of Obi-Wan’s wrist, and his soul sat itself against Obi-Wan’s, starved for warmth and hope. It reached out for help, and Obi-Wan offered it freely.

“Stay with me?” Anakin asked again, and Obi-Wan thought his tone was laced with a fragility that resembled hope, that time.

~*~

Obi-Wan toyed with Lola as he leaned back in the chair, turning it over in his hands contemplatively. A sea full of stars folded open before him, and with it an endless amount of possibilities. It was overwhelming to have his personal world expand from the dunes of Tatooine to the vastness of the universe at large, but his skin prickled in anticipation. 

He activated the ship’s long-range communicator. 

“Hello, Bail,” he said, and felt a soft smile tug at his lips. “Hello, Leia. I’m sorry to have to tell you that I am not able to return Lola to Alderaan in the foreseeable future. I’ve come across an old friend quite unexpectedly, and we are setting out on a journey that might take a while. But I hope that it might lead to some hope where there first was none.”

He was quiet for a moment. He might not return at all, and he could not offer such an empty promise. He couldn’t say his goodbyes to Luke at all, the boy being unaware of his existence in the first place. Perhaps he should’ve returned to Tatooine as he’d planned to continue his vigilance and followed the plan they had set in motion ten years ago.

But they hadn’t planned for Anakin, either, and Luke had his family. He was a child, and he needed to be a child for many more years. Above all, achingly, unbearably desperately, Obi-Wan wanted Luke and Leia to grow up in a universe that was kinder to them than it had been to him. It was unfair to expect them to shoulder a burden that Obi-Wan hadn’t been willing to carry for himself.

“Leia,” he said, slowly, “You are wise, discerning, kindhearted. These are qualities that came from your mother. But you are also passionate and fearless, forthright. And these are gifts from your father. They were exceptional people who bore an exceptional daughter. And I dearly hope that we will meet you again, and to share more adventures with you. And if I don’t return, well.”

He heard Anakin moving around the ship. “Obi-Wan?” he called out, muffled through the walls. He sounded nearly gleeful despite what they had decided to set out to do. “I’ve got a couple of more ideas for where we can strike against the Empire.”

“If I don’t return,” Obi-Wan repeated, “then you can be comforted knowing that I died trying to bring back a little bit of light to the galaxy. And I believe that is always worth the effort.” He paused. “May the Force be with you.”

The message ended, and he let the tension bleed out of his body. He set Lola back where he’d originally put it, opposite the pilot’s seat, just in time for Anakin to enter the control room. He looked bemused to find Obi-Wan there.

“So eager to go?” he said, and his eyes wandered to Lola. “I don’t understand why you needed to bring the droid along. I thought you hated droids. It belongs to the child, doesn’t it?”

Maybe, Obi-Wan decided, maybe, one day, Anakin’s eyes would be blue enough for him to learn about the children. Luke and Leia were still safer with Anakin distantly away, and he’d never forgive Obi-Wan for keeping them a secret, but perhaps they could meet their father. It was a hope he had never nurtured before, and he pushed down the thought even while it soared. Anakin wasn’t Sith, no, but the Dark Side would never fully leave.

But there was a little bit of Light that seeped in, eroding the harshest edges of the Dark like water smoothened stone. It wasn’t a guarantee, and it wasn’t a promise. But it was hope, and it unfurled in him despite his misgivings.

“Please promise me you’re not going to pick it apart,” he said mildly. “I’m going to have to return that one day, you know. I made that little girl a promise.”

“I’m sure she’d appreciate an update,” Anakin said, but he didn’t touch the little droid. Obi-Wan did not doubt he would as soon as his head was turned. Instead, Anakin jostled his shoulder against Obi-Wan’s chair. The light of the stars reflected against the silver of his limbs. “Come on. We’ve got a lot to do before we can leave, and I don’t know about you, but I’d like to kill Sidious sooner rather than later.”

“For the good of the universe, I hope,” said Obi-Wan drily.

“Yeah, yeah,” Anakin said, and more solemnly, “Not really. But that’s what I’ve got you for, don’t I?”

“It is,” Obi-Wan said. “It always was.”

Anakin sent him a withering look. “You’re getting sentimental in your old age.”

Obi-Wan smiled, and stretched out to reach Anakin’s Darkness. It draped over him like a blanket, slightly scorching and uncomfortable, but craving the gentle touch. Their grief connected again, so many regrets resting between them, but at the root of all that sorrow sat a bright little memory of love. 

The Dark stretched out, a little tentatively, for the Light; uncertain of its welcome, still, unused to being invited warmly. Anakin’s rage was quiet and restrained in the face of genuine friendship, at least for now. Anakin reached out for help.

Obi-Wan reached back.