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Obi-Wan sat wringing his hands nervously as he stared at his bed. Or rather the person currently laying unconscious in his bed. The fact that there was anyone in his bed was unusual enough, in the past five years he’d never had anyone there. The few times he got blind drunk and sought out a fling in Mos Eisley, because sometimes a human, no matter how broken, just needed to be touched, he never brought them back here. This place housed nothing but his pain, and it had to stay secret for him to be able to do his one job. Old Ben was eccentric, if not outright insane, and half the people in Anchorhead still weren’t convinced he existed at all, which suited him just fine. He certainly didn’t bring hookups to his hut in the desert.
All of that barely registered in his mind, beyond the irony of the first person other than him that had ever been in this bed being precisely the one man who should never ever come anywhere near it. But Obi-Wan knew for a fact that there wasn’t anywhere else he could take him after he’d followed the smoke from a wreckage last night and found him in the remains of a small fighter, because this person didn’t, couldn’t exist.
Anakin’s eyes blinked open slowly, and he sent him a heartbreaking kind of smile, soft and warm, and like nothing he’d ever directed at him before. The scar on his cheek scrunched up with it, and so did the crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes, wrinkles that hadn’t existed last time he’d seen him.
“Hi,” he whispered, voice rough from sleep, but tone softer than anything on this planet ever was.
And Obi-Wan couldn’t answer because the eyes that scanned his face with so much love in them were sky-blue.
“Are you alright?” Anakin asked, laying a hand (flesh! Warm and soft and living flesh!) on his knee. “You look tired.”
He wanted to think this was a vision. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen Anakin in his exile. But he’d carried him from the wreckage here himself, had felt the solid weight of living matter, not hallucinations or figments of the force. He’d never seen Anakin with his hair this long, tied back with just a hint of gray at the roots, but he’d imagined it many times, when he allowed himself to wallow in what-ifs.
“Kriff, the holocron,” Anakin said, sitting up abruptly, then swaying slightly from the head injury he’d undoubtedly gotten in the crash. Obi-Wan fought the urge to ask him to be careful and lie back down.
“What holocron?” He asked instead.
“The one you sent me to find,” Anakin answered very slowly, brows furrowed in confusion. “I think it caused a hyperdrive malfunction, but I don’t remember much after that. Wait, where are we? Where’s Padme?”
She’s dead, Obi-Wan didn’t say. She’d dead because of you, like so many others. He couldn’t say it out loud, he’d never had to.
“Tatooine,” he managed to choke out.
“Tatooine, of all places… How did you even find me? We better get back home, you know how she gets when she’s left alone with the twins for too long.”
No, I don’t know how she gets when she’s left alone with the twins, he should have said. She doesn’t even know how she gets when she’s left alone with the twins, because she never got to spend any time with them. Because, and I cannot stress this enough, you killed her.
“What do you know about the twins?” He said, forcing his voice to remain steady.
“What? Obi-Wan, you’re scaring me.”
And Obi-Wan just laughed, long and drawn out, and so hysterical it almost sounded evil. Not as evil as the man in front of him was. Or should be, at least, because through the bond that had snapped into place as if it had never been broken he felt nothing but light.
“Oh, I get it,” Anakin smiled. “I can’t believe she finally managed to talk you into this. Although I was expecting to be a bit more tied up if we ever played this game.” And perhaps Obi-Wan should have tied him up, he’d certainly considered it. But in the end he knew nothing he had would hold Anakin for any longer than it would take him to get angry. He definitely should have tied him up, he decided, when Anakin continued. “But I’m glad I’m not, because I can do this.” And then he. He leaned forward and kissed him, sure and sweet and teasing, and entirely absurd.
Obi-Wan jerked to his feet so fast his chair fell over. He’d dealt with a lot in his life. Had remained calm in the face of death and horrors beyond most sentients’ imaginations. But this was too much for him and before he knew it his lightsaber was lit and hovering in front of Anakin’s throat.
“Whoa,” Anakin answered, with not a trace of the anger he’d expected, arms half raised. “A lightsaber’s a bit heavy, don’t you think? I’m not saying I’m against it, I just think we should talk about it first. Or maybe we have? I told you I don’t remember much.”
“No, you talk.” Obi-Wan said, finally regaining his calm, now that there was a blade between them. “When did you last see me?” He asked, as good a question as any to start unravelling this mystery.
“A week ago, I think. Depending on how long I’ve been unconscious.”
“About fifteen hours,” Obi-Wan answered automatically. That wasn’t helpful, so he tried another route, ignoring the nausea that always came with the subject. “What about your master?”
“Well I could see him better if he wasn’t blinding me with his saber,” Anakin huffed, that sly smirk he’d flashed earlier returning. “You are my master, is that what you wanted to hear?”
“I’m not. You made that clear a long time ago.”
“Oh, not that again. We both know you enjoy hearing it, and it would be a lot easier if you just got over it because I really can’t handle the mixed signals right now.”
“Stop it,” Obi-Wan snapped, “tell me who the sith master is.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get anything off the holocron, I think the council will need to examine it.”
“The council?” His voice wavered.
“Kriff, is there someone listening?” Anakin asked, and Obi-Wan shook his head, against his better judgement. But he knew the threat of being watched wouldn’t stop Anakin from committing any atrocities, and that way he could keep him focused on himself, instead of wandering off and finding Luke.
“You know, hiding this is getting ridiculous. Everyone knows we do their dirty work anyway, it’s not like they would have let us keep our sabers when we left if we didn’t. You spend half your time in the temple, and your hood doesn’t fool the holo reporters one bit.”
Obi-Wan felt his lightsaber lower slightly. The temple was gone, the council dead. And no one had let them keep anything when they left, because there was no one left to do so. But Anakin had never been this good a liar. He felt his knees start to give out, and he fell to the bed next to him. Anakin immediately moved closer, laying a tentative hand on his shoulder. He turned his saber off, because he was in no state to use it.
“What’s wrong?” Anakin asked.
“Tell me about us leaving,” he asked, distantly aware of how exhausted and small he sounded.
“Obi-Wan…”
“Please. Just humor me.” If this was a vision he could at least try to enjoy his delirious imaginings before going back to grieving every future he’d lost.
“Alright. After the chancellor died,” Anakin started, and Obi-Wan tensed. Anakin’s hand tightened on his shoulder and he hated how much comfort it brought him.
“How did he die?”
“On the invisible hand, Obi-Wan, you were there. You know I don’t like thinking about it.”
“Please,” he begged, and something in his voice must have convinced Anakin.
“Alright, fine.” he took a deep breath and continued with his eyes closed. “We were in the elevator shaft and I was holding both of you. Dooku, he must have hit me harder than I thought, or I don’t know, there was so much darkness on that ship, I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t hold you both.” his voice broke and Obi-Wan saw a tear slide from behind his tightly shut eyelids. “You… You told me to save him, to choose him, and he agreed. But the force told me to choose you, always you. Or maybe that was just me. Maybe I was just selfish. When it turned out he was funding the separatists I thought maybe that had been a sign, what I was meant to do, but I still don’t know. I guess I never will. Some part of me still doesn’t believe those files they found in his office.” He opened his eyes and sent Obi-Wan a wet, tired smile. “I’ve never told anyone that, you know. Maybe you were right to ask me about it.”
Obi-Wan couldn’t do anything but nod and wipe at his own eyes.
“Do you want me to go on? We’re getting to the good parts,” Anakin smiled, still a touch sadly.
“Yes. Please.” He hadn’t said ‘please’ this many times in half a decade. It wasn’t a very useful word on Tatooine.
“I was so lost after he died. He was like family to me, and I was too weak to save him. And then to learn he’d orchestrated the war to get more power, that he’d put the chips into all the clones to make them obey only him… I didn’t know what to think. And Padme was pregnant and then you killed Grievous and the war ended, just like that, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’d never been a knight without being a soldier first, and I never got to be myself before becoming a Jedi. I thought I was ready to be a master before then, but I realised I wasn’t ready to be anyone but a general. Certainly not a father.
“And then I remembered that when I was thirteen you told me if I ever left the order you’d come with me. To finish teaching me.. And Padme… I think she knew, long before we did. She always knows more than anyone, and she took you into our life, into our bed like she was fitting in the last piece of a puzzle. We certainly wouldn’t have managed to raise the kids without you now that Bail stepped down and Padme was elected chancellor.”
Obi-Wan’s mind spun slowly in a thousand directions. It sounded like a fairytale, one of the old Mandalorian ones, with a happy ending paid for in impossible decisions and often blood. But the silence didn’t last long before Anakin broke it.
“I hated myself for asking you to leave the order. I still do, you know. Sometimes, when they send you on a mission and you come back so proud… But we’re happy. You’re happy, I hope.”
And Obi-Wan knew that his mind wouldn’t be able to conjure up anything like this. And the force might be dark these days, but it had never been mean. Never tortured him with anything this elaborate. It could be good or evil, but it was usually more straightforward than this. There was no conclusion here, no hint for the future to gather from all this. So he had to accept that in some world Anakin had chosen him. In another world they were happy. And the tears that had been gathering in his eyes broke loose as he started shaking in silent sobs. Anakin pulled him into his arms and wrapped him into a tight hug, and how natural, how practiced the gesture was, only made him cry more.
“Are… Are you not happy?” Anakin asked, sounding as broken as he felt.
“I would be,” Obi-Wan breathed shakily. “I promise you if that happened to me I would be happier than I’ve ever been. I know he must be.”
“He? What do you mean if it happened? It did happen.”
“Not to me. Not here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either. But I’m guessing that holocron, that hyperdrive malfunction, it…” He wiped his face with his sleeve, but still couldn’t meet Anakin’s eyes. “This isn’t the world you’re describing. This world is broken.” By you, his mind screamed. By you, and now you’ve come here to torture me without even knowing it.
“What happened here?” Anakin asked, with a hint of fear in his voice.
“Sidious, he… It was Palpatine all along. He was the sith lord, and he used those chips to kill the Jedi.”
“No. No, it couldn’t be him.” Anakin’s grip tightened almost painfully around Obi-Wan.
“I’m sorry,” he said, because there was nothing else to say.
“What about Padme? Luke and Leia, where are they?”
Obi-Wan shook his head, stayed silent.
“Tell me,” Anakin begged, voice increasingly desperate.
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t? Show me then.”
Obi-Wan felt a tug on the bond that should not exist, and his shields reinforced out of habit more than any conscious decision. He’d spent years living in fear of the moment Anakin would try to reach for his mind, preparing for it, having no other purpose in life than protecting Luke. But now, with this perfect, impossible, happy version of Anakin pressing at the edges of his mind with a comforting, familiar touch he hadn’t known how much he’d missed, he found another reason to refuse.
“I can’t. You’ll hate me.”
“Obi-Wan, I could never hate you. I love you.”
And those words, paired with the open look in Anakin’s beautiful, blue eyes was more than enough to break through years of pain, through decades of training, and smash his defences to pieces.
He felt Anakin slip into his mind like it was natural, like he’d never left, warm and bright and gentle as he coaxed the right memories to the surface. Those last few days, that Obi-Wan never thought off, and yet couldn’t ever ignore. The betrayal, the pain, the immeasurable loss. The love confessed too late, now paired with the knowledge that it hadn’t been what broke them, but could have been the only way to save everything. He basked in the warmth of another’s force presence so close, so open, so skilled in the way it moved, compared to Luke’s bright sunlight burning at the edges of his awareness at all times, without any idea how to reach back. He barely felt Anakin’s arms tightening again, until he could barely breathe, but that felt good too, like nothing ever did these days. It wasn’t until Anakin choked on a sob, until he bit down on his shoulder through layers of threadbare robes, that he realised he wasn’t looking anymore, that he’d stayed in his mind because he thought he could. Because he knew he could, knew that they both needed it.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He wasn’t sure who said it, but they both felt it.
“Come with me,” Anakin mumbled into his neck. “When I go back, come with me. You deserve so much better than this.”
And force, how he wanted it. To run away from all this, to pretend it never happened, or at least see who he could have been if it hadn’t. But Anakin deserved better than him. He had an Obi-Wan who’d loved him enough, who could save him.
“I can’t. I can’t leave Luke. He isn’t safe here.”
“I’ll kill him,” Anakin whispered, and they both knew he meant Vader. That brought up a philosophical dilemma far more complicated than the confirmation of the long-suspected existence of parallel universes. Besides, now that Obi-Wan knew that Padme had been right, that there was still good in him, that there had been another way out, he didn’t regret not killing him on Mustafar, like he had every time he saw that blank helmet in imperial propaganda that managed to reach even this far from the Core. He had to stay here and fix this. He couldn’t abandon this world he’d helped destroy.
“Don’t,” he said, and that one word managed to convey all of his feelings, or maybe that was because of the still present curl of Anakin’s mind around his, turning protective, possessive almost as he wrapped all that unbearable brightness around them.
“The emperor, then. I’ve done it before, I should have done it earlier. I can’t make any of this right, but I can make it better.”
“No. This isn’t your responsibility. What if something happened to you? They’d never even know, in your world.”
“Nothing will happen,” Anakin said, the fierce determination making him sound like he had in the last months of the war, for the first time today. “I’m strong enough, he doesn’t expect me. Why else would I be here? And…” He took a deep breath. “And if I died here, they’d survive. They have each other. You need me more than they do.”
I don’t rang false and hollow even in Obi-Wan’s head, so he didn’t bother saying it.
Instead, he finally brought his hands up to wrap them around Anakin, pulling him close like he now knew he should have so many times before. Instead, he let his face be tilted up by two hands, one cold and firm, the other brimming with life, and let Anakin pull him into a kiss, wet with tears and unbearably soft. He responded too, let himself pretend that he could have this, that he had had this. At least until Anakin’s hands moved, one tangling in his hair, the other settling on his waist to pull him closer, and he remembered he couldn’t. He hadn’t.
“Don’t,” he said again, and Anakin pulled away.
“Let me give you this. Let me show you,” he whispered against Obi-Wan’s lips, looking into his eyes with so much honesty, so much remorse that wasn’t even his to bear.
“I can’t. I couldn’t… I’d rather not know.” He already knew more than enough, would be haunted by this fairytale as long as his nightmare of a life lasted.
“You already know,” Anakin said, because he could read his mind like an open book and Obi-Wan had no desire, nor even ability to push him out. “I know you, Obi-Wan, and I don’t think that’s why. I know how easily you can lock yourself away. You don’t think you deserve this, and I won’t try to change your mind, but tell me, what do you want?”