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Taking a deep breath, Anakin raised the flap above his head and entered the tent.
As soon as he entered, he stopped again. His feet could no longer move.
There was nothing in the dimly-lit tent but a low wooden table with another small side table next to it, a single chair, and a cabinet against the far wall. A wash basin filled with pink water sat on the side table with Obi-Wan’s tattered clothing and lightsaber discarded beneath it.
Obi-Wan himself was laying on his right side on the table with his back fully to Anakin. A single folded blanket was covering his hips. Another small blanket was rolled up beneath his head as a pillow.
Anakin felt the urge to look away as if he was a child again and had stumbled onto something forbidden. It had been years since he’s seen much more of his master than his hands and his face. Even then, Obi-Wan had taken to wearing gloves into battle. And his beard covered most--
His beard.
Anakin ran around the table and knelt down next to Obi-Wan’s head. He had to stop himself from gasping.
The left-side of Obi-Wan’s face was in bad shape. A large laceration ran down his temple, hooking just below his cheekbone, varying sizes of burns peppered his cheek, the bridge of his nose was split open, his chin was so bruised that it was nearly black, and a telltale line of dried blood had trickled from what Anakin could only assume was a ruptured eardrum.
But the worst of all was that his beard was gone.
In what had most likely been a misguided attempt to assess the full extent of the Jedi’s facial injuries, the locals that had saved him had shaved him as well.
It made Anakin’s blood boil that they had touched him in such a way as if the act itself had been sacrilegious.
All he could do was stare as memories flooded back into his mind. His hands clenching and unclenching into fists at his side.
As a young padawan, Anakin had taken to memorizing every single one of his master’s features. The freckles and moles that adorned his face, the cleft of his chin, the exact number of flecks of grey in his blue eyes, the precise shade of copper of his hair, the warmth and color of his signature in the force, the shape of the scuffs on his well-worn boots, the sound of his stride… all as though one day his master would be taken from him and Anakin would have to conjure him back from memory.
Even now Anakin remembered all those things. And if he could just conjure that man now, maybe they could start all over again. They could fix this.
Maybe.
No.
The thought was stupid. That man no longer existed. Nor could Anakin conjure him again.
This Obi-Wan had taken his place for better or for worse. This Obi-Wan that currently lay half-dead in front of him with years of abuse on display for the world to see.
And it was too late for Anakin to do a kriffing thing about it.
Anakin could suddenly hear Obi-Wan’s voice in his head as clearly as if he were awake now. “It does not do to dwell on what was, Anakin. Or what could have been. You must trust the force that you are exactly where you should be.”
The raging fire inside Anakin began to dissipate and he breathed a heavy sigh.
Scrubbing both hands over his face, Anakin walked around the table to retrieve the chair. Since he wasn’t letting Obi-Wan out of his sight anytime soon, he decided he might as well sit. And the short walk afforded Anakin time to count the rest of Obi-Wan’s injuries.
If the man’s face had been bad, the rest of him was much worse.
Obi-Wan’s left shoulder hung at an unnatural angle across his chest, suggesting a dislocation that would have to be fixed when he awoke. His chest, stomach, and back were mottled with bruises. Lacerations both large and small covered almost every other piece of skin….And that was just the new stuff.
The dark pink saber burns on Obi-Wan’s left arm and thigh made Anakin close his eyes, hoping that the wounds would disappear when he reopened them. They did not.
A pang of guilt stabbed at him as he recalled the days following the first battle of Geonosis. The pain, the anger, and the urgent need to run back to Padme had so consumed Anakin that his master had been an afterthought if he had been a thought at all. It was only much later that he had learned from a very irate Vokara Che that Obi-Wan had refused treatment upon their return to the temple until his padawan had been satisfactorily taken care of. Which meant that Obi-Wan was probably forcibly healed several days later. It was never discussed again.
Just opposite the familiar burn on his left thigh was something else Anakin was wholly unfamiliar with on his right. A deep muscle wound that was crisscrossed with more saber burns. Hoping against all hope that someone had only been attempting to cauterize the wound, Anakin realized that his master had, it seemed, been tortured instead. With a lightsaber no less. Anakin recognized the makeshift work of a Clone medic to the wound but again it had come too late. The bacta had sealed the ruined skin in place like an artist seals a work of art after its completion.
There was going to be a very long conversation about this later.
Moving around to view Obi-Wan’s back, Anakin thought someone somewhere was playing some sick game of tempting fate by saying “It can’t possibly get any worse.” Maybe it had even been his own voice. Because somehow it had.
There, intersecting like some kind of twisted map, were the remnants of their time with the Zygerrians. While a virbowhip does not always break the skin, Obi-Wan had been beaten so brutally and for so long that the scars of nearly a dozen of the lashes remained. Some strokes even falling across his bicep and forearm as well. To his shame, Anakin had never discussed his master’s time in the slave colony of Kadavo. The only news Anakin received of the man’s well-being after-the-fact had been from Rex, who had made a point to contact the Jedi General every day for the next following weeks.
Even older scars of a similar provenance, though fewer and much more faded, lined the very top of each shoulder blade. These had gotten shorter as Obi-Wan had grown in height and his shoulders broadened, though the matching brand that rested between them at the base of his neck had not. The broken circle was exactly as Anakin remembered it.
One day when he was very young, Anakin had burst into Obi-Wan’s room when his master was dressing. When noticing the brand, Anakin had questioned it. In true Kenobi form, Obi-Wan merely brushed it off as though it had been a simple birthmark. Later that same evening when Obi-Wan didn’t know Anakin was watching him, Anakin had caught his master absentmindedly rubbing the back of his neck, his eyes far away in a distant memory.
These were just the scars that could be seen. How many times had Obi-Wan been stabbed, beaten, shot, blown up, and then put back together again with no trace left at all?
Anakin didn’t think he could take anymore.
Unfolding the blanket currently covering Obi-Wan’s waist, Anakin drew it up to the man’s chin and down to his feet. Then he walked the chair back around to the Obi-Wan’s front and planted it next to his head. Suddenly drained, Anakin unceremoniously plopped down into the chair and closed his eyes.
When he reopened them, Anakin noticed that Obi-Wan’s right hand had somehow escaped the blanket. Leaning forward, Anakin gently picked it up and, twisting his own left arm around, placed his hand on top of Obi-Wan’s so that his fingers splayed open and their palms aligned.
As a boy, Anakin held out his hand to his master hoping one day to be as tall, as wise, and as powerful as the Jedi Knight. As a young man, Anakin refused his master’s hand because deep down he felt as if he was holding him back. Obi-Wan had never offered his hand to Anakin again in such a way.
Anakin’s fingertips now rose just a little higher than the icy fingers beneath them.
“I win, old man,” Anakin whispered, smiling sadly.
Emotion overwhelmed him and Anakin closed his hand, gripping Obi-Wan’s like a vice. He turned to look at his master’s face again.
With the beard gone Anakin could almost see the young man that had become his master. But the image had become warped like a tapestry that was being slowly destroyed by the pulling of a single thread until the whole piece frayed at the edges.
Did I pull that thread?
So lost was Anakin in his thoughts that he didn’t even notice that Obi-Wan’s eyes had opened and were lazily staring at him.
“Anakin,” came the soft voice.
Anakin’s chest tightened.
“My face is cold.” The corner of Obi-Wan’s mouth curled ever so slightly as his eyes closed once more.
Tears stung Anakin’s eyes as he began to laugh.