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This is a love story.
Here is an immutable fact: there’s no universe where Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker don’t meet.
In some, it’s a passing, fleeting thing, but this is rare. In most, they exist as planets in the same orbit, conjoined and connected, inextricably intertwined.
This universe is one of those.
Love is a strong thing. Love is not some toothless, fragile thing that fractures at the slightest provocation, and Obi-Wan and Anakin do love each other. In a way that’s deeper than brothers, deeper than best friends. Pieces of them are tangled so intricately together in the Force that the knots can never be undone; they are part of one another.
Anakin loves Padmé, in his own twisted manner, but it’s never been the same. It’s romantic, and sexual, and fanciful. Anakin’s love for Obi-Wan is fierce and rippling and complicated. But strong. So very strong. The roots of it go down to his very core.
And of course, Anakin was the first person Obi-Wan ever really had that was his. His master hadn’t truly wanted him, had dropped him at the first opportunity; the Order hadn’t wanted him in the beginning; and he’d never bonded closely with his crechemates. Anakin, though. Anakin had attached to him immediately, had stayed close by his side even as he grew, though other padawans and masters naturally grew slowly apart as their apprenticeship approached its end. Anakin and Obi-Wan hadn’t, and when the war began, they never truly did.
In the end, it wasn’t enough. So often it isn’t. How can love, steel-cut and iron-willed as it is, stand up to the allure of hate, the attraction of power? How can love conquer fear without trust?
And of course, that was the whole point. Sidious planted seeds of distrust, and Anakin was both shaped into something awful, and became something awful all on his own, out of fear.
Anakin felt betrayed by Obi-Wan, as Obi-Wan felt betrayed by Anakin. But betrayal is only betrayal if you love the person going against you, real or imagined. And hate as big, as strong, as terrible as Anakin’s could only come from love.
And the guilt Obi-Wan had, the kind that hollowed you out and filled you up with it, until you were nothing but the shell of a person made of nothing but regret, could only come from love.
#
In the early days, Anakin frequently slept badly.
He missed his mother, who he’d never been without, and the Temple was cold and strange and reverberated with so many loud presences in the Force, in a way the slave lodgings on Tatooine never had.
When he climbed into Obi-Wan’s bed a few days into being taken as his padawan, he felt driven to it, upset and tired. He just wanted to sleep, and Obi-Wan was the only person who seemed to want him here, the only person he could go to. Besides, Obi-Wan was warm, and reverberated soothingly in the Force. On the other end of their fledgling training bond, thin and wavering, Obi-Wan was bright and steady, like the rising twin suns.
(This was all explained to Obi-Wan many years later, on a mission where a monsoon hit suddenly and stranded the two of them for about eight hours in the underground tunnels common on the planet. They talked for a long time. Perhaps if there had been time for discussion like that later, things would have been different. But that doesn’t matter. It didn’t happen, after all. What does ‘would have’ matter, in the end?)
Obi-Wan himself had awoken to a small body wedging itself into the narrow bed alongside him, and had opened his eyes to see Anakin peering at him, looking apprehensive but determined.
“Padawan?” Obi-Wan asked, trying to make sense of what was happening, bleary-eyed.
“It’s cold,” Anakin whispered back. Or, well. Spoke in a voice he thought was a whisper. “And loud.”
At the word ‘loud’, he waved a hand around his head in a way that Obi-Wan guessed was indicating the Force. Ah. He should have expected this would be a problem, with how strong Anakin was.
“And why are you in my bed?”
“It’s cold,” Anakin repeated, losing the attempt at a whisper and looking at Obi-Wan like he was an idiot for not understanding immediately. “And loud. And I can’t sleep.”
“Ah,” Obi-Wan said, for lack of anything better.
Anakin clearly took this as permission, because he settled in and gave the appearance of someone ready to sleep.
And so they did.
#
“Get the– no, not that!”
“Then what, Anakin?”
“The drive-wrench, the– no, the 4.5 size!”
“We are being shot at, Padawan, forgive me for not knowing what size wrench you need!” Obi-Wan yelled, hanging from the support strut by his knees and trying to deflect blaster bolts from the encroaching guards with one hand wielding his lightsaber, the other busy digging through the toolkit attached to the strut below as all the blood rushed to his head. He passed another tool blindly upwards, hoping it was the right one this time, and Anakin, perched farther along on the beam, made a victorious sound.
“Got it. Master, get up here!”
There was a creaking noise as the maintenance hatch opened. Obi-Wan spared a second to tuck the unconscious janitor farther into the nook at the end of the strut before he flipped himself right-side up and followed Anakin through the hatch and into a narrow hallway.
“Well,” he said, adjusting his sleeves as Anakin muttered to himself and tried to seal the hatch behind them. “That could have gone better.”
“How was I supposed to know waving hello was a sign of war?” Anakin asked incredulously, squinting at the bolts lining the hinge. “Besides, they were using the aid ships to transport spice instead of relief supplies. We knew that coming in, and the stuff I grabbed on the way out will probably prove it enough to get some action taken. Mission accomplished, right?” He did something to the latch, squinted again, took a different wrench out of his robes, hit the hatch particularly hard in a few spots, then stepped away with a satisfied look.
Anakin then began walking, leading them who knows where. Obi-Wan just hoped it was somewhere with a ship.
“That’s not the point. If you’d read the briefing packet–” he began.
“‘If you’d read the briefing packet,’” Anakin repeated, in a mocking tone. “Yeah, yeah. That’s your job. Remember when I caught you after you jumped off the fortieth floor of the ambassadorial building on Gr’nai?”
“Yes, I remember. That was before you set their Grand Ambassador on fire, wasn’t it?”
“No, it was after.”
“Of course. My apologies,” Obi-Wan said sardonically as they emerged into a hangar bay. Huh. Guess Anakin did know where he was going, after all.
“I’m picking their newest and shiniest ship, and you can’t stop me,” Anakin said as he jumped down from the access point and landed on the walkway, leading them down to the main floor.
Obi-Wan nodded at a concerned-looking guard and smiled like they were still honoured guests and not rapidly approaching this planet’s most-wanted fugitives.
“I hope you know that in my report to the Council, I will be assigning blame where it is due,” Obi-Wan said through his teeth, affixing a serene, we-are-not-running-away expression on his face, overtop his I-am-a-mysterious-and-powerful-Jedi-Master expression, as they passed another cadre of guards.
“We both know you’ll share it equally and neither of us will get more than a slap on the wrist,” Anakin answered, leading them up the loading ramp of a small angular fighter so new it practically sparkled. Obi-Wan knew it wouldn’t for long. Poor thing didn’t know its fate.
Behind them, shouting had abruptly broken out, as the guards who had been chasing them caught up to the hangar and informed the guards there of the situation. Obi-Wan sighed.
“Get in the pilot’s seat,” he told Anakin, who grinned delightedly at him and darted inside as Obi-Wan took up a defensive stance to keep the blaster bolts out of the ship’s interior while the ramp closed. “I hope when you become a master you get the worst behaved padawan!” he called up the ladder as Anakin disappeared into the cockpit, laughing.
#
Obi-Wan didn’t actually enjoy fighting.
He was the best practitioner of Soresu since its creator for a reason, and though he enjoyed the katas and the movement of lightsaber sparring, he didn’t enjoy hurting people. Melida/Dann had crushed any part of him that once thought fighting was exciting, or righteous.
No, fighting was a dirty endeavour that you did when necessary in order to get to a place where you could act without violence. It was a messy means to an end, and he avoided it whenever possible. Of course, winning was harder when you looked reluctant, so he’d long perfected the ability to look at ease in battle, and he excelled at banter in any situation anyway. Spending time with Anakin would teach you that.
If Obi-Wan had to get involved in conflict, he preferred to take people apart with words, to manipulate their own statements, to undermine and undermine and undermine until they’d caught themselves in their own webs. That, he did sort of enjoy.
But it was war, and he didn’t have the luxury of stepping back, of saying no, of trying to make the arena verbal rather than political. And despite his dislike of it, he was good at battle.
They would never stop sending him out, because he would never stop agreeing to it. And even if– even if he did say no, well. Some part of him wasn’t sure if they would even listen to him. He was too good, and they were too desperate.
Besides, the theoretical no would never be said. He would never be able to bring himself to say it, because Anakin was out there too. And he couldn’t leave Anakin alone.
Masters and padawans severed their training bond alongside the braid. When a padawan was knighted, the bond was broken, and the knight wouldn’t have one again until they had a padawan of their own. That was how it went.
But– Obi-Wan and Anakin had never severed theirs. They had never acknowledged it out loud, the fact that it still existed; and it was strong as ever, though there were slivers of darkness in it that concerned Obi-Wan greatly.
It must be the war, he reasoned to himself late at night, staring at the ceiling of his bunk in The Negotiator. War tore at all concepts of goodness. He didn’t know what else it could be – Padmé, for all that Anakin’s badly-hidden relationship with her was against the Code, was good for Obi-Wan’s once-padawan. He knew the look they shared well. It was the same he once shared with Satine. Surely Anakin would be careful to keep his love from straying into attachment. Right?
Oh, how he worried. The bond was bright, but flecked with dark. And Obi-Wan didn’t know what to do.
Melida/Daan had burned some tender thing out of him when he was only a child, and for all that Anakin had been through, all that Anakin had done and seen, that small tender thing was still in him. There was some part of him that was still almost childish. Sometimes, when they got a chance to spend time together that wasn’t as generals, just friends and brothers and Jedi, Anakin would sit at Obi-Wan’s feet and fiddle with the insides of his lightsaber as Obi-Wan read, just as they did when they were both younger and shared quarters in the Temple.
Obi-Wan feared for that tender thing. He feared it was already being eroded.
And, more as an afterthought, he feared just a little for himself. For what he was becoming. Mostly, he feared the ways he could no longer be there for Anakin, and the ways he was no longer himself, consumed by battle.
If he were a better man, Obi-Wan would confront Anakin, rather than trying endlessly to convince him softly that he could tell Obi-Wan his worries, could bring his concerns to him. Obi-Wan would sit him down, he’d– he’d– he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. But he’d do it.
He was just so tired, was the thing. Tired of the war, tired of not having enough time for Anakin, who he wanted so desperately to be okay, because he loved him, he loved him. He was tired of subsisting on moments stolen after campaigns with the 501st, his relationship with Anakin a barren field spotted with grass, instead of the lush garden he was used to. He was tired of it all.
He didn’t like to fight. Force, he wished he was worse at it.
He wondered what it said about him – his talent. He wondered if he was just designed for battle, endless and grueling. He wondered if he would die out there on the field, instead of in the Temple, or senatorial duty, or on a mediation assignment, as he’d always assumed. He had always wanted to work as a crechemaster in his old age, Council be damned. If he was being honest with himself, he had always wanted to do it at any age - had ever since Melida/Daan, where knighthood has lost all its true shine. He had only pursued that path as he aged because he thought it was the one that would disappoint the least number of people. Obi-Wan wished, now, that he'd had the bravery to pursue what he wanted in the first place. Maybe, if he had, he wouldn't have ended up in the Clone Wars.
(No, he knows he would have. He can't ignore conflict. Melida/Daan had taught him that, too.)
He thought that, if he survived this war, if he lived long enough to see its end, he'd resign. Spend the rest of his days in the creche, no matter how fighting-fit he was. Teach the padawan classes. Tuck in the little ones at night. Maybe he could convince Anakin to pick up a few classes as well, though he knew Anakin would want to continue as a deployed Jedi.
These were dreams, he knew. Flickering and intangible as mist.
But as the war dragged on, and his bond grew dimmer and darker, and his love for Anakin began to twist in on itself like an ouroboros eating its own tail, he couldn't help but dream. It was the only bright thing left to him.
#
Obi-Wan remembered a village he’d visited once while on assignment with Qui-Gon, when he was just a padawan. Every night, the residents would gather around a bonfire, sparking blue and white from the dry branches collected from the planet’s silver flora, and they’d tell stories.
They were almost musical, the way they were told, but rarely happy. Over the three nights Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon had spent there, invited into the circle by the residents in a way that made it evident it wasn’t a suggestion, there had been only a few scarce tales that ended well. Overwhelmingly, they were dark and sad and terrible.
He had never asked why, once he’d gotten a good look at the residents’ faces. Everyone, even the children, had deep creases in their flat, half-moon faces. They had suffered. Their village had been all that was left of a great city that had once stood nearby, and they lived in the shadows of the half-bombed buildings. The species passed on their memories to their children at birth to ensure knowledge wouldn’t be lost, so that even the youngest had memories of the destruction.
They were, all of them, haunted.
Standing there in the sand, alone on his love’s homeworld, Obi-Wan finally knew what it was to be haunted.
He felt the heat of the blue and white fire, the bodies at his side crowding him in closer to the circle. Qui-Gon somewhere on the other side. The four moons washing everything in a thin kind of light. The chanting before the storyteller stepped forward and silenced everything with a move of her three arms. The twining, lilted tone of the story.
The end of one – he witnessed birth and death the same, and held them in his body. At the end, he had no one to pass on his memories to. The greatest condemnation to their people, Obi-Wan knew. He was alone in his knowledge, and not only had to die with this, but had to live with it.
The end of another – This is the great tragedy: to have the capacity to love, but no one to share it with. This is the greater tragedy: to have the capacity to love, but lose the people you love. This is the greatest tragedy: to have the capacity to love, but the people you love no longer want it.
He stood in the sand, the memory of children in his arms, and looked at the twin suns. He thought about another child, bigger, tucked into the cradle of his body every night for that first year. He thought about Anakin, who was part of him, who he was a part of. He thought about Mustafar, and the burning heat of the lava blended into the flickering heat of the bonfire, and he was crying before he realized it.
The stories were two decades old, and he was finally living them.
#
Obi-Wan doesn’t die in the Temple, and he doesn’t die on senatorial duty, or on a mediation assignment. Those are all lost institutions, now. The war he had once been so convinced would kill him has ended now.
He dies at the hands of his love, and wishes he had not been written into a tragedy. At the end, still, he wishes Anakin had not been written into this story either. With a red lightsaber in his chest, he wishes.
He thinks about Leia’s stubborn voice on the holo, about Luke’s trail of droids. He thinks, I saved the only part of you I could.
The younglings he once hoped to help raise are all dead. The creche he thought he might like to watch over is destroyed. All his dreams are ash.
Anakin, oh, Anakin.
Some terrible part of him is still glad, despite everything, that Anakin lives. His padawan, his fellow general, his brother, his best friend, his partner. His love. The other side of that glowing, golden bond that split on Mustafar, burned away.
The children are children no longer. They live. He can hear, as he lies there dying, the noise of the ship taking off. He thinks about them escaping into the stars, and smiles. Above him, Vader watches as Obi-Wan’s robes, so reminiscent of the ones they both once wore, turn dark with blood. His breath rattles in his chest.
He smiles, thinking about the Anakin that was, about the boy in his bed, so small as he tucked himself beneath Obi-Wan’s arm, about realizing that this fragile little body was all his to protect now. He smiles, thinking about Luke as a child, Leia as a child. How much like Anakin they were and are, about how they were his to protect, and he did. He did.
These last pieces of his padawan are in a ship in the stars now, breathing, living, and the thing that was once the center of his world stands above Obi-Wan and watches him die. He feels that, for all the horror of it, it is a fitting end for him.
Obi-Wan holds it all in his body, life and death, as the storyteller said – the feeling of those little babies in his arms, the feeling of Mustafar’s fires burning at his skin, the feeling of Anakin at his feet as he reads, the feeling of the lightsaber through his chest.
And with one last breath, he lets it go.
#
Years from now, there will be a new presence in the Living Force. And, joining the rest of his lineage, Anakin Skywalker will exist for the first time in twenty-three years.
Obi-Wan has been waiting.
This is, after all, a love story.