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The standard clock strikes half past midnight.
Obi-Wan sets the basin on the floor. The man who is no longer Vader sits against the wall like a broken doll, one arm bent in a sickening angle, hands lying palm-up and unclenched between half-crossed legs. He’s not uncooperative, just limp, when Obi-Wan lifts his hands or turns his shoulder to remove the broken armor pieces. He’s not unresponsive, just lackluster, when Obi-Wan decides that the clothes are too mangled to salvage anyway and announces it to him in a murmur. He’s not unfeeling, just very, very quiet. Worryingly quiet.
In the shadow of Anakin’s silence, the only light that comes through is his eyes. Obi-Wan feels Anakin’s gaze like a physical thing, following his every movement in weary wariness as the scissors slowly snips their way along the seams. It’s borderline suffocating, how the air is so thoroughly silent that Obi-Wan can hear exactly how shallow Anakin’s breathing is. He sets all of the blood-soaked scrap fabric aside and dips a cloth in lukewarm water. He meets Anakin’s eyes, before wiping a streak down his front.
Anakin’s body is littered with scars; if there is a patch of unmarred skin left amidst the glossy criss-crossing, it would be dark with bruises. So many scars for someone so young, Obi-Wan catches himself thinking, frowning deeply - because Anakin is young, younger now than any other time Obi-Wan has glimpsed him outside of his distinct helmet. Young enough to be a Padawan, even, had the Jedi found him before the Sith. Obi-Wan sighs.
A deep cauterized gash runs from the tip of Anakin’s shoulder to the middle of his chest, and a fresh burn spreads from his heart to diaphragm, all of which Obi-Wan quickly covers with bacta patches before cleaning the rest. The blaster shot wounds are a more pressing concern, as they are still bleeding. He bites his lip in commiseration, nearly holding his breath as he cleans the too-tender flesh as gently as he can. His lineage does not have a gift for the art of healing, and Anakin’s shields are still rammed up high and tight, so Obi-Wan opts to monitor Anakin’s reactions for any sign of sudden pain.
Anakin doesn’t make a single sound. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move. If it isn’t for his breathing sometimes hitching, Obi-Wan would have thought that Anakin is entirely numb - which would have been worrying. Whenever he glances up to Anakin’s face, their gazes touch; Anakin’s eyes train on his face rather on his moving hands, not alert, but not aimless either.
Water darkens in the basin. Obi-Wan has changed it for a third time, and is on his second washcloth. There is so much blood it’s a miracle that Anakin has made it this far, has dragged himself into the Jedi Temple without getting caught. Obi-Wan works his way down to the slippery patch on Anakin’s thigh, which turns out to be a wound that he can’t - and doesn’t want to - even begin to guess the cause: Raw burnt flesh just ripe for infection on the edge of a gaping cavity still oozing blood.
He whispers an apology as he has done for every touch, dabbing the cloth at the least damaged edge of the wound. This is by far the nastiest wound he’s seen, and Obi-Wan raises his gaze, worried that this might be where Anakin breaks.
Anakin doesn’t.
And somehow it’s even more disquieting.
“You can’t feel it?” Obi-Wan breaks the silence.
Anakin finally blinks at him. Even the confusion is better than the utterly blank look he has been sporting.
Obi-Wan breathes a sigh of relief, short-lived though it is. “Your injuries?” He specifies.
Anakin cocks his head a bit - almost cute, Obi-Wan thinks in passing - but then says in a voice devoid of emotions whatsoever. “It’s not that bad.”
Obi-Wan scoffs. “Anakin, there is blood and bruises everywhere on you. And I think your arm is badly broken. Can you even feel it?”
Anakin shrugs with his unhurt shoulder. “No.”
“You can’t—” Cold dread bursts in Obi-Wan’s chest like a sheet of ice shattering. He places a hand on Anakin’s shoulder. “Anakin, you need to see a healer! Why did you let me—”
“No, I mean”—Anakin straightens up minutely—“I can’t feel it because it’s not there anymore. It’s just a mechno-arm. Dooku cut my real arm years ago.”
“…Dooku.” Obi-Wan stares at him, voice flat. “Dooku, the other Sith, who’s supposed to be your ally. He cut your arm.”
Anakin makes a vague sound of affirmation, and falls silent, letting Obi-Wan struggle to form a reply to that. Now it’s his turn to look at Anakin in the face, while those now-blue eyes turn towards the ground, lashes so long they cast shadows of their own.
“Don’t call a healer,” Anakin finally mumbles, not looking at him. “I don’t want healers. I don’t want… people. I don’t like anyone touching me.”
“Oh.” Obi-Wan’s eyes widen, realizing that he still has his left hand on Anakin’s shoulder, while his right rests just over Anakin’s knee, still clutching the washcloth. He makes to pull away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
Anakin’s hand flashes up in sudden, unexpected liveliness, immediately squeezing Obi-Wan’s hand on his shoulder. His eyelashes quivers.
“You’re not ‘anyone’.”
—
The entire living room smells like bacta with a hint of blood by the time Obi-Wan is done. He locks Vader’s lightsaber with its buzzing red crystal in a drawer, and wraps away the broken prosthetic and ruined armor and shreds of clothing; it’s not safe enough to discard them conventionally, and he will have to burn them later, ideally somewhere unfrequented. Right now, there is no way Obi-Wan can leave his quarters. Not with Anakin limping out of bed at the sound of a fresher door sliding open or shut.
By all rights Anakin should have passed out from lightheaded exhaustion by now, yet he seems even more awake now than even when Obi-Wan first found him on his knees in the hallway. Anakin pauses at the sight of him and sits back down on the edge of the bed. He fixes Obi-Wan with the gaze of a Loth-wolf.
Obi-Wan lets out a sigh, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. He takes a seat beside the former Sith. “Anakin,” he enunciates each syllable in a lingering rhythm, “could you please stop watching me like this?”
Anakin blinks at him; so far, Anakin seems capable of two states of being: desperate, and confused. “What do you mean?” He looks deceivingly innocent, covered in bandages and wrapped in Obi-Wan’s colors - a thought that Obi-Wan, startled, quickly shuts down. “I’ve always looked at you like this.”
Obi-Wan’s mouth hangs open, his mind running the sentence through. Always? Since before? And then it occurs to him that Vader wore the helmet along with his full suit of armor every time they clashed in battle. The few rare times they crossed paths outside of combat were all hair-thin ceasefires, too tense, too charged with fragile hope for him to notice. It dawns on Obi-Wan that Anakin has no concept of what is an appropriate amount of looking, of staring at someone.
“...Should I not?” Anakin ducks his head a little, and reaches for Obi-Wan’s hand.
By Force, this is a man who demanded surrender from Jedi only to open fire on them, who killed hundreds with just his hands and a lightsaber, who led operations that burn cities of civilians, who scorched the earth of whole planets and poisoned whole systems. This is a man who has done enough evil to make the core of a kyber mountain shudder. He has no rights looking like this, lamb-like in both colors and manners.
But could a child weaned on blood and brought up on broken bones know any better?
“Go to bed, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, in a tone distinctly reminiscent of that which he used with a younger Ahsoka in her rebellious day. (Not that she has gotten any less rebellious; she only moved on to matters more significant than bedtime.) He squeezes Anakin’s hand, and eases him down onto the pillow, and watches Anakin until Anakin can’t watch him back anymore.
And like all infants who fall asleep with a hand in their own, Anakin holds on tight.