Chapter Text
The moment Obi-Wan fled into hyperspace, he knew something was wrong. The force felt off, wrong, destroyed - it had for days, he didn’t know if it would feel right again. But what he was feeling wasn’t the force. The ship - an old junky thing he mindtricked a trader into giving him for free and forgetting him - was shaking, wavering as they travelled, parts falling where they really shouldn’t be.
He clutched baby Luke to his chest, trying to comfort himself, more than the child. Obi-Wan wasn’t him . He’d never been a dab hand at engineering. He could not repair a ship more useful as scrap than for travel in hyperspace. He did the only thing he knew he could do, slunk to the floor and believed as strongly in the force as he could do. Even though it seemed impossible.
The last thing he remembered before everything went black was Luke’s finger grabbing onto one of his own.
“General Kenobi?”
“General?”
“Sir?”
“Obi-Wan!”
Everything hurt. He blinked awake slowly. His vision was blurry but he was already writing this off as a head trauma induced hallucination because that figure - black armoured robes, curly hair, clipped lightsaber at his waist had been left limbless and insane to burn to death on the shores of Mustafar by him.
He was moved around, adjusted, hands lifting him off the ground, a trooper in 212 yellow and Not Anakin pressing him gently against a metal barricade. He scrambled around to find a grip but even as he found handles and holds, there was no strength in him to lift himself up.
He sank down, clutching at the warm weight strapped to his chest. Muffled voices passed him by.
“Is that a kriffing baby?”
“Where… get it from?”
“General… me. Can…”
His eyes snapped shut, his control over them turned involuntary and all he knew was the cool welcome of sleep.
Obi-Wan hadn’t had a baby five minutes ago. That much, Anakin was sure of. He’d run off for five minutes to deal with some droids as they handled the taking of Pharistoanes, a small planet that they had found evidence of colluding with the Separatists. Then he had returned and Obi-Wan had collapsed, babe in arms.
They were back on the Negotiator, Obi-Wan being attended to by Kix and Anakin and Ahsoka on babysitting duty.
“He’s really force sensitive, it’s like I can’t even look at him without being blinded.” Ahsoka sat on the bench, holding the freshly swaddled child.
Anakin frowned. “Wouldn’t we have sensed him on the planet before though? I don’t get it.”
“Neither,” his Padawan agreed. “I mean Boil and Waxer found that child one time but they were gone for ages. Is this another weird force thing? Or is a Separatist thing?”
“It would be almost hilarious if Dooku’s next plan against us was knocking us out and giving us children, so no, that doesn’t make sense. He’s more in the way of stealing force sensitive children, not the other way around. But it could be another enemy. Did you check the child for trackers? They’d know we’d take the child, that could be how,” he was spitballing, eyes locked on the baby. There were a few wisps of blond hair on his head and he was actually pretty cute. But he could be a security risk.
Ahsoka nodded, “Kix scanned him. If anything’s there, nothing on the ship can catch it.”
He sat down, not even realising that he’d stood up. “Can I hold him?” Ahsoka handed him over, adjusting Anakin’s grip. His flesh knuckles brushed the smooth skin of the baby’s - did he have a name? they couldn’t keep calling him ‘the baby’ - cheek. He gurgled happily, toothless mouth opening and closing and bright - almost unnaturally - blue eyes refusing to look away from him.
A warm feeling - one of home, comfort, familiarity - rose in Anakin’s chest. He let it sit there, not batting down the emotions like he usually did these days.
“He seems pretty fond of you , Skyguy.”
He let Baby reach for one of his fingers, his miniscule hands brushing along the back of his index finger. It was a really nice moment, only ruined by his former master bursting in, followed by what seemed like a troupe of concerned clones.
“Luke! LUKE!” How Obi-Wan was walking let alone running was beyond him, the man was shirtless with a collection of bandages and bacta patches covering him from the waist up and he was a concerning shade of white.
Cody caught up to him, catching his shoulder as Anakin stood up, making sure he was still supporting… Luke’s? head.
Obi-Wan’s panic, distress and horror was practically irradiated in the Force. Anakin and Ahsoka weren’t the only ones to notice this though because Luke took the opportunity there to burst out in ear shattering wails.
Anakin himself tried his best to counteract all of Obi-Wan’s negative emotions with peace and calmness, hoping to bring Luke back down to his quieter state but with no such luck.
“Obi-Wan, you need to sit down, please,” he said.
“You’re not real,” he grunted. “I’m seeing things. Please,” his voice cracked, “Please give me Luke. Give me the baby.”
Anakin took a step towards him, Ahsoka at his back. Obi-Wan seemed wilk. His hair was a mess and now that he was closer he noticed his shallower, rapid breathing. He was not okay. “If you sit down,” he negotiated, “I can sit next to you with Luke.”
“I- I want to hold his hand.”
“Will you sit down?” He was seriously concerned now. He nodded to Cody, who took his arm and guided him to the bench. Obi-Wan didn’t struggle in any way. He was completely focused on the people around him, eyes dancing wildly from Cody, to him, to Ahsoka, to Luke, to the troopers that had followed them in. Oh right, Anakin would have to deal with them.
Raising his voice to be heard over Luke’s slowly (or maybe that was his imagination) quieting cries, he said, “All of you except Kix and Cody are dismissed.”
“Yes, sir!” The vod’e marched out leaving the six of them inside. Anakin settled himself next to Obi-Wan, taking the man’s arm to touch Luke’s, as promised. Almost instantly, the choking emotions clouding the Force cleared. Obi-Wan’s breathing evened out. He didn’t make any kind of miraculous recovery - Ekkreth knew he still looked a complete mess but something about Luke was calming him.
Digging deeper though, as Kix did his best to examine Obi-Wan from their unorthodox location and position, Obi-Wan’s force presence was still harried. Scared. Confused. But nothing near where he’d been before, which was a relief, he supposed.
Nothing about this kriffing day made sense.
After Obi-Wan had drifted off, hand grasping the baby’s, everyone but Anakin and the two left the room. Ahsoka, Cody and Rex were put on the hunt by Kix for makeshift baby things.
“I can improvise things like diapers and swaddling cloths but we have no clothes or a cot or even proper food,” he’d explained, an apologetic look fixed to his face.
They left the ship, heading down to the unattacked part of the planet, a collection of small villages in the northern mountains which droids hadn’t gotten around to invading by the time they’d arrived.
“Commander,” said Rex. “Do you know anything about children? We’ve,” he gestured between him and Cody, “Barely ever interacted with them, really.”
“I get creche duty sometimes. Mostly when I was an initiate, they’d have us take care of the children but usually it was up to the Padawans and I should be there now…” She trailed off. They all knew the war had changed such things. Abnormal was normal. Up was down. Tatooine had one sun. “Didn’t Kix give us a shopping list though?”
“Yes but… in general. We- the baby is cute.” Cody tried to justify himself.
Ahsoka smiled. “That’s true. The sooner we get the stuff, the sooner we can go see the baby.”
Obi-Wan drifted awake. He was still hallucinating. Anakin - with blue eyes, smiling at him, his war robes, holding his baby, holding Anakin’s own son - was there.
Anakin who was dead. Anakin who’d fallen. Anakin whom he’d left to burn.
He was there.
“Obi-Wan, what happened?” He sounded gentler than Obi-Wan had remembered him being in later years. “Where did you get the baby? What’s wrong?”
He wiped his face with the back of his hand, feeling the tears that had gathered just from seeing the two of them.
Even if this was a hallucination, something brought on by his brain as a mercy in whatever transport failure had happened and was slowly killing him, he could enjoy this while it lasted. Maybe.
He’d meditate on it later. Or hallucinate meditating on it. Regardless, he wanted this to be real too much to deny it.
“I need to talk to the Council. I have a theory. Where are we and what is the date?”
Anakin told him where they were and the date, about a year into the Clone Wars.
“See, before you left me and I appeared with Luke, it’s well- I think I’ve time travelled. By about two years into the past.”
Anakin frowned. “Do you think I should get Kix back in here? Do you think you’re still concussed?”
“I know you’re married to Senator Amidala,” he interrupted him. “The wedding was secret, on Naboo, before the war started.”
Anakin’s eyebrows disappeared into his forehead. “I- how.”
“I mean, I already knew about your relationship at the time, you were never a good liar or secret keeper but she told me. In nearly two years.”
“You knew? You knew about me and Padmé? How?” Anakin demanded. Obi-Wan had a feeling that if he hadn’t been holding Luke, he’d have started pacing like a madman.
“I mean… do you want a list or was it more rhetorical?”
He slumped in his seat, the tips of his ears turning red. “Okay. Fine. Assuming I believe that you can time travel - and yes, I know that it’s possible according to legend , but you have to agree that it’s still implausible - what about the baby? Luke is so force sensitive, it's blinding. Where did he come from?”
“Originally? Senator Amidala. And you I suppose but we don’t need to have that talk again, I hope.”
Anakin blinked. He looked down at the baby. He looked up at Obi-Wan. He looked down at Luke again. “He’s my son?”
“That is what I meant when I said he came from you and your wife, yes.”
“My son?” His voice was so small, he practically breathed out the words. “He’s mine?”
“Yes, Anakin. Lukkesh Skywalker is your child.”