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Patience, the Force whispered to him.
It had been saying that for nineteen years, usually in Qui-Gon Jinn’s voice.
Patience.
In all honesty, had it not been for the constant repetition, Obi-Wan would have run out of patience years ago.
He was supposed to watch over Luke Skywalker, but apparently this “watching over” was meant to be at a distance instead of actually training the boy.
Patience.
“He’s five years old; that’s the cutoff for when we typically accepted children into the Order.”
Patience.
“Nine years now—that’s how old Anakin was when he joined. Surely that’s old enough.”
Patience.
“Sixteen! This is becoming absurd. I’m not going to live forever, you know.”
Patience.
“Easy for you to say.”
Like most things, after almost two decades of nothing happening, everything suddenly happened all at once.
Over the years, Obi-Wan had saved more than a few lost travelers out in the Wastes and had grown accustomed to feeling the pull of the Force guiding him to where he needed to be, especially when Sandpeople were involved. He once overheard a few Anchorhead residents talking about a violent incident from a few decades ago: a cycle of kidnapping and revenge that escalated until a local human (no one wanted to name names) led an attack that massacred an entire settlement of Sandpeople. The old enmity between the two groups was unlikely to abate any time soon, so anyone caught alone and unarmed in the Wastes was typically in desperate need of help.
This time, the Force was a little more insistent than usual, and it wasn’t until Obi-Wan had performed his usual trick of imitating one of the local predators to scare the Sandpeople away that he realized why.
The young man lying on the ground had inherited his mother’s slight build, but his coloring was so like his father’s that Obi-Wan’s heart nearly stopped in his chest.
And, like his father, Luke had been knocked unconscious following what was probably a series of highly questionable decisions.
He isn’t Anakin, Obi-Wan reminded himself. You’ve been given a second chance; don’t waste it by focusing on your anxieties.
On their way to his home in the Wastes, Obi-Wan was barely listening to the odd explanations he was giving Luke about his father and the Jedi and the Empire. He had at least planned out the story about Vader killing Anakin in advance; it was easier to explain it that way than to walk Luke through what really happened.
Well, Luke, your father was actually a slaughterer of children who betrayed every person he ever knew and every ideal he ever stood for, and then I chopped off all his limbs and left him to burn, which is why you probably know him as Darth Vader, the most dangerous person in the Empire. Now, let’s go over the basics of the Force, shall we?
Instead, Obi-Wan did his best to make the whole thing sound exciting and noble, even though he was fairly sure there had never been anything noble about the final years of the Republic and the Jedi Order.
Obi-Wan also kept looking over at the blue and silver astromech that he was growing more and more certain was the one that Anakin had cared for to a completely illogical extent, and hoped with all of his might that it had been given a memory wipe. He had a similar suspicion about the protocol droid, but it did seem to have been wiped—in Obi-Wan’s experience, protocol droids were usually honest to a fault.
Luke mentioned a message, but before he could launch into the main part of his explanation, the R2 unit projected the image of a woman in front of them.
No… it can’t be.
She had the same posture, the same precise speech, the same intensity in her eyes.
“General Kenobi,” she began, as Obi-Wan’s vision began to blur and his heart began to race, “years ago you came to my aid during the Clone Wars. Now your help is needed again, this time in our struggle against the Empire.”
All these years, she was helping the Rebellion.
“I regret that I am unable to present this request to you in person, but my ship has fallen under attack and I’m afraid my mission to bring you to Alderaan has failed.”
She was coming here to find me.
“I have placed information vital to the survival of the Rebellion into the memory systems of this R2 unit. Senator Organa will know how to retrieve it. You must see this droid safely delivered to him on Alderaan. This is our most desperate hour.”
It’s just like last time, right before I failed her.
Her face had more lines on it than it used to, but of course she would look different after twenty years, just as he did.
“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Satine Kryze said, “you’re my only hope.”
The message ended and the image vanished.
“Are you okay?” Luke asked, worried. "Who is she?"
She’s alive.
That’s impossible. She died twenty years ago. Maul killed her right in front of me. She died in my arms.
She can’t be alive.
“We have to leave,” Obi-Wan said, moving as though he were on autopilot. “Immediately.”
“Leave for where?” Luke scrambled to his feet and switched the protocol droid back on, while Obi-Wan retrieved both his lightsaber and Anakin’s old lightsaber.
“Alderaan.” Her ship was attacked, but he could rescue her after he went to Alderaan. Hopefully Bail Organa would have an idea of where she might have been taken.
“I can’t go to Alderaan!” Luke protested. “I’ve got to go home, it’s late, I’m in for it as it is—”
Obi-Wan grabbed him by the shoulder. “You are coming with me to Alderaan.”
Luke’s eyes widened as he tried to pull away, but Obi-Wan held on. “Look, I can take you as far as Anchorhead—”
“I did not give you a choice in the matter,” Obi-Wan snapped, practically dragging the boy in the direction of the landspeeder. “Our meeting was long overdue as it was; there is no time for debate.”
Patience, the Force whispered.
Not this time, Obi-Wan replied.
If I had just taken Luke years ago, we would have both been with the Rebellion and I would have known and I wouldn’t be finding out this way, with her in danger yet again.
But this time, I will not fail.
He learned the wrong lesson from his failure on Mandalore. The Council had forbidden him to go, saying that they did not have the authority to interfere in the affairs of a neutral planet, but Satine had asked for his help. It was a choice between the Order and his heart, as it had been nearly every time he saw her. Years before, when they first met, he had chosen the Order, but he made a different choice this time: he stole a ship from Anakin and went to Mandalore.
It had been a trap, one set by Maul to lure him there. Obi-Wan was usually skilled at avoiding traps, and even better at escaping them, but not that time. Maul killed her to get revenge on him. Satine had died for the most pointless reason possible.
Only she didn’t die, it turns out.
He learned the wrong lesson—that he had been wrong to defy the Order—which meant that when Anakin fell to the Dark Side and Yoda ordered Obi-Wan to go stop (in other words, kill) him, Obi-Wan obeyed and ended up making everything worse.
He had nineteen years to dwell on those mistakes. He would not make them again.
The Lars farm was under attack when they arrived. If Obi-Wan had delayed any longer, if he hadn’t been constantly hounding Luke to go faster, if Luke hadn't decided to take a route that went a little closer to Anchorhead on their way to Mos Eisley, they would have gotten there too late.
As it was, the main building was on fire and the place was swarming with Imperial stormtroopers.
Perhaps, if the circumstances had been different, Obi-Wan would have dusted off his old ‘Negotiator’ skills and found a way to defuse the conflict, to convince the stormtroopers that there had been a misunderstanding and trick them into taking another pair of droids instead.
But the circumstances were not different, so his lightsaber would have to do the negotiating on his behalf.
“Find somewhere to hide,” he told Owen and Beru Lars afterwards, “with friends or family, as far from here as you can.”
“You brought this here,” Owen accused him. “This is because of you, isn’t it?”
“In a way,” he admitted. “Luke, get in the speeder.”
“He’s not going anywhere with you,” Owen snapped, trying to step between them.
“You knew this day was coming,” Obi-Wan hissed in his face. “You knew I would be back for him eventually. Worry about yourselves now.”
Luke appeared ready to jump into the argument himself, but apparently whatever look Obi-Wan just gave him was enough to convince him otherwise.
Their drive to Mos Eisley was in a very tense silence.
Patience, the Force whispered.
Shut up, Obi-Wan replied.
Seventeen thousand was a completely ridiculous amount of credits to spend on a single space journey, but Obi-Wan was far too impatient to haggle. The pilot smelled desperation and could probably have charged them even more, but he seemed to be impatient to leave as well.
All Obi-Wan cared about was whether the ship actually lived up to its pilot’s ridiculous (and somewhat nonsensical) claim about its speed. After they entered hyperspace, he tried to distract himself by teaching Luke a few basic lightsaber forms and letting him practice blocking shots from a small remote droid. Luke was hesitant and still looked slightly afraid of Obi-Wan, but seemed to be trying to make the best of a bizarre situation.
"Your eyes can deceive you," he advised Luke, after the young man received yet another stinging bolt from the remote. "Don't trust them."
The ship turned out to not be quite fast enough. Or perhaps just slow enough: had they arrived any earlier, they would have all died along with Alderaan.
For a few minutes, all he could feel was the horrible emptiness in the Force where billions of individuals should have been. Bail. Breha. Their daughter—Luke’s sister. All gone, likely annihilated without even knowing what had happened.
How do I tell Luke about Leia now?
How can he not sense this loss as well?
Perhaps it's for the best that he can't.
But there wasn’t any more time to feel or to grieve or even to escape: a battle station of that size had the power to emit a tractor beam that could not be escaped.
Obi-Wan was trying to keep the rest of the ship calm but was having some difficulty keeping himself under control as well. He reached out to the Force—and sensed two things that nearly knocked him over.
Vader was on that battle station.
And so was Satine.
“Even if I could take off, I’d never get past the tractor beam,” Han complained as they snuck off of the ship and into the command office for the landing bay.
“Leave that to me,” Obi-Wan said. He was barely paying attention; he needed to keep his presence in the Force hidden from Vader or they were all as good as dead.
And now he needed to figure out where the tractor beam controls were located. “Artoo, access the station’s network and pull up a map if you can.”
Something about all of this reminded him a little too much of his final mission with Anakin, when they had to navigate the chaos of Grievous’ ship to rescue the Chancellor while dozens of calamities erupted around them.
Only this time, he is the Sith Lord.
The protocol droid translated the astromech’s response: “The tractor beam is coupled to the main reactor in seven locations. A power loss at one of the terminals will allow the ship to leave.”
The map on the console showed the location of all seven terminals. “Which one is closest to the detention level?” Obi-Wan asked.
When Artoo indicated the terminal, Luke looked at him in confusion. “Why do you want to go to the detention level?”
Obi-Wan tried to think of a way to explain. “The woman from the message is here,” was all he could manage.
“She’s here?” Luke cried. “We’ve got to rescue her!” His sudden enthusiasm seemed to surprise even him.
I suppose we’ll make a Jedi hero out of you yet, Obi-Wan thought, unsure of whether he should be proud or worried. Anakin had paid a little more attention to the “hero” part than the “Jedi” part, and it had not ended well, as their present circumstances had made clear.
But enough people had died today; Luke was the only hope they had left of stopping Vader one day. “Stay and watch over the droids, Luke. They must be delivered safely to the Rebellion or other systems will suffer the same fate as Alderaan.”
Luke’s expression darkened into one of stubborn indignation. “But what if—”
“Will you be patient for once, Anakin!” Obi-Wan snapped at him before he realized what he had said. He took a shaky breath and tried to calm down. “Just… stay here until I return.”
He needed to hurry: not merely to find Satine and deactivate the tractor beam, but because he was fairly certain that Luke’s patience would only last another fifteen minutes before he did something foolish.
Patience, the Force whispered.
I am in no mood to be a good role model right now, Obi-Wan replied.
He should have gone to the tractor beam terminal first. Breaking into a detention block was a surefire way to attract attention, and would make the other task harder, but this was not turning out to be a good day for rational thought.
She’s here. That’s what matters.
Fortunately, the guards in that particular block were a little on the weak-minded side (Obi-Wan supposed that anyone willing to be a guard on a planet-destroying battle station probably weren’t the most independent thinkers), so he was able to pass by them unnoticed.
He doubted it would last.
The cell in question was practically blazing in the Force. He was amazed that no one else could tell.
She’s here.
He opened the door to the cell and stepped inside.
Years ago, he probably would have had a light-hearted quip ready, but now all he could do was stand there and stare at her.
Satine no longer wore the elegant dresses and accessories that had been her habit before and during the Clone Wars, but she still held herself as though she was holding court, even here in a bare cell.
Seeing her in person, he noticed the steel-colored strands of hair mixing with the old familiar blond. Age had only made her more formidable: she looked at him as though assessing him, sizing him up, and preparing to pronounce judgment, all with a faintly-amused gleam in those deep blue eyes.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that outfit on a stormtrooper before,” she said drily.
“I was in a hurry,” Obi-Wan said, surprised that his mouth could still form words. “It wasn’t as though I had time to ch—”
He failed to finish his sentence, however, because suddenly she was across the cell and in his arms and kissing him for the first time in… how many years was it? His Padawan days were a lifetime ago. Thirty years? Thirty-five? Well, it wasn’t as though it mattered at the moment anyway.
I should have done this on Mandalore.
I should have done this after we stopped Tal Merrik on the Coronet.
I should have done this every single time I saw her.
They were still in a race against time and would likely be spotted by stormtroopers any second now, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go of her.
Eventually, however, he had to come up for air. As his lips reluctantly left hers, he whispered “I thought you were—”
“I’m here,” she interrupted with a smile that made him wonder if he would ever be able to breathe normally again, and cupped his chin in her hand. “I’m still not sure about the beard, incidentally.”
He laughed, more in relief than anything else. “I was pretending to be an unstable desert hermit—it helped sell the deception.” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not shaving it.”
“You’re lucky that we have to run for our lives in a moment,” Satine said, stepping around him to look out at the rest of the detention block. “I’ve had twenty years to think of responses to any argument we might have.” She turned back and gave him a wink. “About anything, really.”
Obi-Wan had a thousand questions but she did have a point: they needed to hurry. “We have to deactivate the tractor beam before we can escape.”
She looked at him incredulously. “And you came here first?”
He couldn’t help feeling a little defensive. “Well, forgive me if I thought that saving you was a tad more important.”
“Oh yes, I feel very safe right now,” she said sarcastically. “Do you have a plan for getting past all of these guards?”
“I suppose we’ll have to see how quietly we can walk, my dear,” he said. “And if not, well…”
“The deadly weapon comes out,” Satine sighed.
“Still an ardent pacifist, then?” He tried not to roll his eyes at her. “How did you help the Rebellion?”
“The same way I do everything, of course: with absolute style and grace.” She grinned as Obi-Wan snorted with laughter. “And most weapons have stun settings, you know,” she pointed out.
“I’ll make a note to adjust my lightsaber’s power settings once we make it out of the prison that is inside a battle station. Now follow me.”
It was difficult, keeping his focus on the minds of the guards as they tiptoed past them to the turbolift, and made even more difficult by the fact that his thoughts wouldn’t stop humming: she’s here, she’s alive, she’s here—
They had just made it inside the lift when he realized how close they were standing to one another and his concentration slipped.
“You there!” was all the guard managed to shout before the lift doors slid shut.
“Well, I suppose this is where the ‘deadly weapon’ part occurs,” Obi-Wan said. They had fifteen seconds at most before the lift reached another floor.
Assuming it kept moving, of course… Obi-Wan lit his saber and stabbed it into the control panel. After a few sudden jerks, the lift stopped.
“I’m sure the turbolift had it coming,” Satine remarked.
“I think we’re between floors,” Obi-Wan said as he cut a hole in the door. His timing had been perfect: there was enough space between the decks that they could make their way towards safety (well, relative safety, at least) without any Imperial entanglements. It wouldn’t be the most spacious route, nor the most comfortable—they would have to crawl and his knees weren’t what they once were—but it was the best option they had, as long as his memory of the station map was correct.
“No one told me that you were alive,” he said quietly as they made their way through the passage, realizing how much that omission hurt to think about.
“Well, you did say that you were a hermit all this time; I expect it would have been difficult to get a message to you without showing up in person.” She was behind him and therefore he couldn’t see her expression, but he could hear the regret in her voice.
“There was almost an entire year between Mandalore and the fall of the Republic,” he pointed out.
“I had been stabbed, if you recall—”
“I could never forget,” he said, trying to push away the howl of grief that had haunted him since that terrible day.
She paused. “I know,” she said gently. “What I meant to say was, because of that, I was out of reach for quite a while. It took time and effort to come back.”
“I can scarcely believe it—that you’re alive and here,” Obi-Wan said, still feeling as though he was experiencing about a hundred emotions all at once.
“No one is ever completely gone, my love,” she said.
They continued down the passage as Obi-Wan mulled that statement over.
Not everyone.
“Vader is here,” he said.
“I know. He’s a bit difficult to ignore.”
“He used to be Anakin.”
“You mean he is Anakin,” she corrected him.
Obi-Wan shook his head, even though he knew that she couldn’t see it. “No,” he said. “No, after he fell, Anakin ceased to be himself. My final duel was with Vader alone.”
He could still feel the distant cloud of darkness somewhere on the station.
Perhaps our final duel is still to come.
“So you think that he is an exception to what I said.” The tone in her voice indicated that she disapproved.
Obi-Wan felt an uncomfortable twinge in his shoulders as he remembered Padmé’s final words: “There is good in him… I know there is…”
“I think we’ll need to save that for a later argument,” he said, "after we make it out of here.”
“Is it just you here?” Satine asked.
He couldn’t help chuckling. “Far from it,” he said. “I arrived with a rather motley crew: a smuggler who likely has a criminal record as long as the Hydian Way, a Wookiee who must have an infinite supply of patience if he’s putting up with that pilot all the time, the two droids you sent me, and,” he couldn’t quite keep the pride and worry out of his voice, “a boy named Luke Skywalker.”
“Ah, I see you’ve acquired a new Padawan, then.”
“Hopefully he’ll turn out to be a little less reckless than my last one.”
Not to mention a little less evil.
“Then I don’t think you’re going to like what I’m about to tell you: I can hear blasters firing from the deck above us.”
Obi-Wan paused and listened: sure enough, he could hear the boots of stormtroopers and the sound of weapons firing. He held back an exasperated sigh. “At least we aren’t too far away from one of the tractor beam terminals.”
The sound of fighting seemed to be moving in the direction they had just come from, so once things above them were quieter, Obi-Wan used his lightsaber to cut a hole in the deck above them.
Climbing out, and then helping Satine up, he realized how much his joints ached. “Do you know,” he said wearily, “I think we may have gotten old at some point.”
“It’s better than the alternative,” she said, appearing to stretch a few stiff muscles of her own. “Let’s go.”
The closer they got to the source of the commotion, the greater the risk of encountering Darth Vader, Obi-Wan knew. But, he reflected, better that he be the one to confront his former apprentice than for the others to face him.
At the very least, Obi-Wan could distract Vader long enough for everyone else to escape.
However, it wasn’t the Sith Lord that he and Satine ran into on their way back to the Falcon: it was Luke, Han, Chewbacca… and a very familiar-looking young woman hefting a blaster that was nearly as big as she was.
“What happened?” Obi-Wan asked.
“Artoo found her name on the prisoner list,” Luke said, his eyes lighting up with what looked like pride but was probably also adrenaline. “They were going to execute her any minute, so we went to go rescue her. Princess, this is Ben Kenobi. He’s a Jedi.”
Obi-Wan caught Satine’s amused expression out of the corner of his eye. Ben? she mouthed silently, raising an eyebrow.
“Please tell me that you have a plan to get us out of here.” Leia—for who else could she be, with all of Anakin’s ferocity compressed into Padmé’s tiny frame?—looked as though she had more or less rescued herself, with the other three dragged along for the ride.
“The tractor beam has been deactivated,” Obi-Wan told them. “All that remains is to return to the ship.” He pictured the station map again. “If I recall correctly, it’s three levels down and half a kilometer in…” He tried to get his bearings but, before he could, Satine elbowed him in the arm and pointed. “Thank you. That way.”
“Which way?” Han asked. Apparently he hadn’t been paying attention.
Obi-Wan sighed and pointed in the direction that Satine had just indicated. "That way.”
“This is some rescue,” Leia grumbled as they hurried down the hall.
“No reward is worth this,” Han complained, following her.
“Reward?” Obi-Wan asked Luke.
The young man blushed. “I may have been a little, uh, creative with the truth.”
Obi-Wan fought back a laugh. “You know, I think you’ll find that many of the truths we cling to greatly depend on our own point of view.”
“Well, he only seemed to be interested in money,” Luke said with a shrug, “so I figured why not? I mean, she is a Princess—she’s got to be rich, right?”
“Will someone get this walking carpet out of my way?” Leia shouted in the distance; Chewbacca replied with an offended growl.
“I think you may have sent the wrong twin to the wrong place.” Satine murmured in Obi-Wan’s ear.
They were within sight of the Falcon when it happened: dozens of stormtroopers, appearing as though out of nowhere, and right behind them stood a figure in all black.
“Get the droids and board the ship,” Obi-Wan murmured to the others.
“You don’t need to tell me twice,” Han said, pulling Luke after him as Leia and Chewbacca opened fire on the troops in the hangar.
Satine was still there. “Please,” Obi-Wan whispered, “please go with them. There’s nothing you can do here.”
“Not until you promise that you’re not about to sacrifice yourself,” she said.
He unclipped the lightsaber from his belt. “If I have to—if it keeps the rest of you—”
“Don’t you dare,” she said, glaring at him. “Don’t you dare stand there and monologue about the greater good. You matter just as much as I do.”
“I couldn’t save you last time.” He could see Vader getting closer. “I won’t fail you now.”
“We spent the last twenty years without each other, Obi. Don’t vanish on me until we’ve had more than half an hour together. Now promise me that you won’t throw away that future.”
Obi-Wan looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. He hadn’t thought about the future, not really—he had been so focused on hurrying, on getting to Satine in time to rescue her, on the immediate present, that it hadn’t occurred to him that there might be an afterwards, a point where they could stop running and just be.
He hadn’t thought about that since his desperate flight to Mandalore twenty years ago, the time when she had asked for his help and he defied the Council and went anyway. There had been a moment, then, when he realized that if his rescue went as planned, she would likely end up returning to Coruscant with him and he would be faced with yet another choice. He had disobeyed direct orders for the sake of an attachment that he was supposed to have forsworn, and having taken that step, what would he do next?
Would he have done what Anakin had done: kept their relationship a secret from everyone around them? Would he have done it openly: dared the Council to expel one of their best generals in the middle of the war? Would he have simply left the Order: turned his back on years of service and sacrifice, out of love for a single person?
Obi-Wan didn’t know what he would have chosen back then.
He didn’t know what he what he was going to do this time.
But if he died here, he would never find out.
“I will see you back at the ship,” he said. “I promise.”
He didn’t have time to watch her follow the others into the hangar, because he was, for the first time in nineteen years, face to face with Darth Vader.
“I've been waiting for you, Obi-Wan,” Vader said in a voice altered enough that Obi-Wan could almost pretend that the face of Anakin Skywalker wasn’t behind that gruesome mask. “We meet again at last.”
Anakin is gone.
Isn’t he?
“I suppose it’s flattering to hear that you missed me,” Obi-Wan said with a sigh.
“Rest assured, old man,” Vader said, igniting his lightsaber, “this time, I will not miss.”
Obi-Wan activated his own saber and blocked Vader’s opening strike.
They were both feeling their age, Obi-Wan realized as the duel commenced. The last time, everything was a blur of acrobatics and blades clashing faster than the eye could follow. This one felt painfully slow by comparison, which made every strike and parry matter that much more.
Patience, the Force whispered.
Well, I certainly can’t go any faster, Obi-Wan replied with annoyance.
He did take the advice to heart, though: Vader was impatient, which had been his weakness before, and Obi-Wan knew that if he just let the Force guide him to the correct moment, he could keep Vader distracted for a very long time.
But it was no longer just about distracting Vader—Obi-Wan needed to survive.
He had promised that he would.
He parried, and parried, and parried, over and over, letting his body flow into the movement and mindset of Soresu, letting Vader wear himself out.
Even though Obi-Wan was starting to feel a little worn out himself.
Patience, the Force whispered.
Parry, dodge, move, parry again.
Waiting for the right moment, waiting for the right opportunity to catch Vader off guard. He needed to break Vader's concentration somehow.
No one is ever completely gone.
“I’m sorry, Anakin,” he began.
He heard a growl distorted by the vocoder in Vader’s mask. “That name no longer has any meaning for me.”
“I should have been more observant,” Obi-Wan said, parrying another slash. “I should have realized how deeply you cared about Padmé.”
“You know nothing about caring for someone,” Vader snarled in reply.
“I do,” he said, dodging Vader’s next attack, “but I should have realized that much sooner than I did.” He parried again. “I should have been honest.”
“All the Jedi know how to do is lie.” Vader charged forward so quickly that, when Obi-Wan side-stepped out of the way, the Sith nearly stumbled.
“You’re probably right,” Obi-Wan admitted, “but it doesn’t seem like you have been honest with yourself in a very long time either.”
Now, the Force whispered.
It wasn’t always lightsabers and footwork that determined the outcome of a duel, Obi-Wan reflected as he looked at Vader, who had yet to turn around and face him again.
Sometimes it was just a wardrobe choice.
Obi-Wan grabbed the hem of Vader’s cape and pulled it over his former apprentice’s helmet.
His vision briefly obscured, Vader swung wildly at the spot where Obi-Wan had been standing.
"Your eyes can deceive you, Anakin," Obi-Wan said, grabbing the lightsaber out of Vader's hand. "Don't trust them."
He was so out of breath when he reached the Falcon that he could barely speak… but he was alive.
As he reached the passenger area and collapsed into one of the seats, Obi-Wan watched Luke drape a blanket over his sister’s shoulders and sit down beside her.
“I can’t believe they’re gone,” she said after a few minutes; her voice was numb with grief.
Luke took her hand in his. “There wasn’t anything you could have done,” he said softly.
Leia shook her head sadly. “At least the information in Artoo is still intact.”
“What information?” Luke asked.
But before Leia could answer, Han started yelling from the cockpit, “We’ve got company! Sentry ships. I need one of you at the gunports and one of you helping Chewie in the cockpit.”
Leia was already on her feet and tossing the blanket onto the dejarik table. “Let’s go,” she said to Luke.
“Are you sure you’re—”
“Come on,” she interrupted, grabbing her brother by the arm and dragging him towards the front of the ship. “You two, stay here,” she ordered the droids.
Satine appeared in the doorway, apparently having passed the twins on their way out. She took a seat next to Obi-Wan. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
“My pleasure,” he said, just as quietly, and tossed Vader’s saber to the deck. “It was almost fun, coming to your rescue again.”
“Not that,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. “Thank you for coming back—for rescuing yourself.”
“There were too many questions that I needed to answer,” he said, leaning into her touch. “Too many decisions that had yet to be made.” The ship suddenly rocked as its shield came under attack. “Assuming we’ll still be alive to make them, of course.”
He could feel more than hear her laugh. “You’ve come this far; I think you can last a little longer.”
“Do you know,” he considered out loud, “I’m actually rather impatient to see what happens next.”
“A Padawan, a Rebellion, and a whole new chapter of your life,” Satine said.
“Together,” he said. “Finally: together.”
She didn’t answer; she merely took his hand in hers as the ship continued to shake around them.
“So,” Obi-Wan finally asked in a slightly louder voice, so that he could be heard over the noise, “Leia was with you on the mission to find me, then?”
To his surprise, it was the protocol droid, not Satine, who answered: “Why yes, General Kenobi,” Threepio replied, “Princess Leia had commissioned Captain Antilles to transport her to Tatooine for a diplomatic mission… only I suppose that may not have been entirely true, given where we’ve ended up.” Obi-Wan could have sworn he heard the droid sigh. “I would have been kept in the dark entirely had Artoo not displayed the message the Princess recorded for you.”
“The message from the Princess?” Obi-Wan asked, frowning.
Threepio sounded equally puzzled. “Yes, General, the one that Artoo played for you and Master Luke.”
It was as though an invisible fist was squeezing his heart. “Artoo,” Obi-Wan said, hearing the tremor in his voice, “would you please play the message again?” He could feel Satine let go of his hand and rise to her feet, but couldn’t bring himself to look at her.
Artoo twittered, and the projector sprang to life.
“General Kenobi,” the blue and white figure of Leia Organa said, “years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars. Now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire. I regret that I am unable to present my father’s request to you in person, but my ship has fallen under attack and I’m afraid my mission to bring you to Alderaan has failed.”
All this time, he had been so focused on Satine that he never noticed how no one else seemed to acknowledge her presence.
“I have placed information vital to the survival of the Rebellion into the memory systems of this R2 unit. My father will know how to retrieve it. You must see this droid safely delivered to him on Alderaan.”
Han didn’t see her pointing towards the hangar. Luke and Leia and Chewbacca never asked who she was. Vader never said a word about her.
“This is our most desperate hour.”
It had been so easy to sneak past those guards with her.
Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them.
“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Leia concluded, “you’re my only hope.”
The image faded away and Obi-Wan felt his own hopes fading along with it.
He looked up and saw Satine standing in the corridor. She beckoned him to join her.
Vader must have thought I had lost my mind, standing there talking out loud to no one.
He felt like he was walking to his own execution.
I was alone in an empty detention cell, just pretending—
“I’m here,” she said, once they were face to face.
I’m talking to the wall.
“You’re a delusion,” he said bitterly.
“I’m not,” Satine insisted. She put her hand on his arm. It felt so real. “It is me. You aren’t hallucinating.”
“You didn’t survive, did you?” he whispered. “On Mandalore… you died. I was there—why did you make me think you were alive?”
“I never said that I was alive,” she said. “Merely that I was here.”
“You let me assume,” Obi-Wan snapped, jerking his arm out of her grip. “You let me have hope. I thought—” All of his grief from twenty years ago returned, even worse than before. “I thought we were going to have a future together. I thought that we would finally… but it was all a lie.”
“I’m still here,” she repeated.
“As what? A ghost?” he demanded. He knew what Yoda had said, he had heard Qui-Gon whispering to him all these years, he knew that it was possible… but only for Jedi.
Wasn’t it?
Did I ever ask? Or did I only assume that as well?
“No one is ever completely gone, my love,” she said softly.
“What was the point of this deception?” he asked, feeling as though he was speaking while being strangled. “Pretending to have aged? Pretending to be with the Rebellion? Making me think that the message was from you instead of Leia? I would have taken Luke and the droids to Alderaan regardless.”
“But you would have been slower,” Satine said. She took his hands in hers, and this time he didn’t pull away; he wasn’t sure that he could pull away. “You would have arrived too late to save Owen and Beru. You would have taken too long to deactivate the tractor beam. You would have let Vader kill you so that the others could get away.”
“All the Force has been saying to me, for nineteen years, was to be patient,” he said, squeezing her fingers and being unable to convince himself that it was merely his imagination, “and you came to tell me to hurry?”
“Patience is not the same thing as inaction, Obi-Wan,” she said, leaning forward and resting her forehead against his. “It’s waiting for the right moment. Your haste meant that you arrived exactly where you needed to be, at the exact moment that you needed to be there. It saved at least three lives, including your own, and altered many more. Luke would have been on his own without you. Vader wouldn’t be doubting himself right now. And there is still so much more that you have to do.” She closed her eyes. “You saved me so many times… let me save you for once.”
“I didn’t save you back then,” he whispered, closing his eyes as well and feeling something that he had not felt in ages: tears. “It wasn’t enough.”
He could feel her breath on his face… it all felt so real. “I’m still here,” Satine said.
Obi-Wan opened his eyes again and made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Are you just going to haunt me for the rest of my life, then?”
“Perhaps,” she said, leaning back a little to look him in the eyes. “You’ll have to get better at not moving your lips when you talk, of course, or people are going to think there’s something wrong with you.”
This time, it was closer to a laugh. “I missed you so much,” he said.
“I told you, Obi: no one is ever completely gone.” There was a flash of mischief in her expression. “You know, you still haven’t said it.”
“Said what?”
“The thing you’ve never said to me, even after all of my dramatic confessions over the years. Go on,” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek, “face your fears, Jedi.”
It still took an effort for his mouth to form the words. “Satine… I love you.”
“I’ve loved you always, Obi-Wan,” she said, putting her arms around him. “I always will.”
Faintly, as though from a distance, he could hear the others cheering as they fought off the starfighters pursuing them, and then felt the motion of the ship as it entered hyperspace.
He probably looked ridiculous, standing in the corridor, kissing someone who no one else could see… but he didn’t care.
He had all the time in the universe to be patient now.