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He leaves Master Yoda’s quarters feeling like the air has turned to acid.
An old enemy has returned. The words are like an echo, like the beat of a funeral march. His mind won’t cooperate well enough to think anything else, over and over, as he starts down the hallways of the Jedi Temple.
An old enemy. An old enemy.
He doesn’t remember going back to his own quarters, but he must, because the next thing he knows he is pacing the small living space. His datapads and files lay open on the table where he left them before Master Yoda’s summons. His cup of tea has gone cold. It’s dark, and he doesn’t know what time of the night it must be. He should sleep, but he won’t. He should do something else, but he can’t.
It’s this restlessness that sends him in search of Anakin.
He’s not sure exactly if he expects his old Padawan to answer the door. Lately the landmines between them seem more volatile than ever, and they can’t seem to take more than a few steps before something sets them off. Obi-Wan’s hair has grown back after his stint as Rako Hardeen, and his beard, which he’d hoped would help. So far, it hasn’t.
So Obi-Wan can’t say he’s particularly surprised when he rings the bell to Anakin’s quarters, and there is no answer.
But he doesn’t know what else to do. He should meditate. He should find peace. But his heart won’t stop pounding, and there’s only a handful of people in the galaxy who even know why, and somehow he finds himself in the hangarbay a few minutes later, borrowing one of the standard-issue Jedi Temple speeders.
He’s halfway across the Coruscant sky before he can convince himself not to go.
The lights are on. He doesn’t hear Anakin, doesn’t really sense him either, but recently that’s nothing new—Anakin has made an effort not to reach out to Obi-Wan in the Force since Rako Hardeen. Obi-Wan pulls the speeder up to the familiar apartment on the upper levels, and walks slowly up to the door.
It’s against his better judgment. And yet.
He knocks.
Padmé is usually up at all hours of the night, and rises in the wee hours of the morning—she adjusted to such a schedule as Queen, and her circadian rhythm never quite recovered. Anakin never minds. It means she’s wide-awake for any other things they may want to do after dark. But most of the time, it’s this—working. All the time.
She’s up at her desk, reviewing a bill that’s scheduled for a vote in the Senate tomorrow, when she hears it. Someone at the door. She mentally runs through the list of people it could be—Bail Organa, Captain Typho, Dormé. Not Anakin, she knows, or he wouldn’t knock. She rises from her chair, releasing her hair from the messy bun in which she’d tied it.
When she opens the door, she is not expecting to see Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Yet, there he is—looking startled, and surprised, as if it were she who had appeared at his door in the middle of the night. He blinks, eyes a little wide. His mouth opens, then closes again.
“Master Kenobi?”
“Senator,” he says, his voice breathy. “I’m…my apologies. I was looking for Anakin, and I wasn’t sure if…”
The rest of the sentence dies on his lips, and Padmé wills her face not to flush. Obi-Wan does not know about her and her husband. At least, she hasn’t told him. Anakin believes he’s totally in the dark. And yet, something about the way he’s looking at her now, something about the fact that he’s here…
She wonders if she isn’t the only one keeping their secret.
“He’s not here,” she stammers back. “I haven’t heard from him. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Which is partly true. But Obi-Wan doesn’t even seem to hear her answer.
He’s looking at her, but his eyes are somewhere beyond her. He’s breathing, but it’s shallow. And immediately, Padmé knows that something is very wrong.
“Obi-Wan.” If he’s surprised to hear her switch to his first name, he doesn’t react.
“I’ll be going,” he says. “I’m sorry I…shouldn’t have disturbed you.”
“Obi-Wan—”
He turns, but she catches his wrist.
He yanks it away as if she’d struck him.
They stand there, frozen—Obi-Wan with his back half turned, Padmé in the doorway, backlit by the interior lights. And it’s in this shadow that she sees the shaky rise and fall of his shoulders, and as he runs it through his hair, the tremble of his hand.
She steps forward. The door closes behind her, and they are enveloped by the darkness and twinkling glow of Coruscant’s night sky.
She doesn’t speak as she sits down on the stoop outside the door. Just leans her back against the exterior apartment wall, and when he turns, motions for him to join. Obi-Wan just stares for a moment. Then moves, slowly. Sinks down beside her.
The exhale he releases is almost a shudder.
She’s seen Anakin like this before—everything welling inside him, the way those hands she loves so much aren't steady anymore. When it’s all too much, when he loses people, when he fears he’ll lose more. But Anakin directs his worry outwards—his all-encompassing fury and passion showing themselves in the form of harsh words and slamming doors and glasses shattering to the floor. He is a whirlwind, a storm.
In Obi-Wan, there are no winds or lightning bolts. There is no thunder, and with it no passion or loss of control. He is quiet, and still, and the fear runs through his veins but nowhere else. He sits quietly, his one foot bouncing quickly and his hands clenching tight before releasing again. He brings one to his mouth, and breathes through it. Once. Twice.
And so Padmé sits with him. And waits for it to pass.
The thing about falling apart is that as you’re on your way down, two things become inevitably clear.
One: you were never too terribly held together in the first place.
And two.
Your place to land.
Being a person is a delicate thing. Obi-Wan knows this, from before. And so he sits on the stoop of Padmé’s apartment with his pounding heart and painful chest, trying to remember why he came in the first place, and somehow still feeling very glad that he did.
He inhales. Ignores the tremor of the air, of his hands.
Lets it go.
When he’s reasonably sure his voice won’t break, Obi-Wan leans back against the wall and tilts his head up, eyes on the clouds and whirring of lights above. And tells the truth.
“Do you remember Maul?”
And she knows.
She doesn’t remember seeing him. Not exactly. Her memory has blurred the Zabrak Sith, his edges fuzzy and distant in her mind. She was running then, switching places with Sabé and holding her breath, aiming her blaster, letting it go.
But she does remember what came after. How before the funeral, she’d found the Padawan alone in a hallway, breathing in and out in shallow breaths, a hand to his mouth, much like this. How she’d turned away then. Pretended not to see.
Now, she doesn’t turn away.
Obi-Wan has settled now. His breaths come easier, and his hands still ball and un-ball from fists, but they’re steadier. She blinks, and sees the Padawan. Again, and she sees the Jedi. Then, the man.
Her hand finds his wrist and squeezes.
“I wish it could be easier for you.”
It’s a ridiculous thing to say. What good will it do? Things aren’t easier. They are how they are, how they’re meant to be. If meant to be means anything at all.
But he looks at her. His eyes are dry, and unreadable. But around them, she studies the lines, the crows feet. The way every bit of his face is kind, even when it’s sad.
She thinks he might say something else. But no. Simply:
“Thank you.”
She nods.
A speeder whirs overhead. For a moment, she imagines it’s Anakin—here for her or for Obi-Wan, it doesn’t matter. But the sky is empty again, and the sound is gone to the sky, and Padmé leans her head back too.
“Are you going to go?”
“Where?” Obi-Wan says. But from his tone, she can tell he knows. He exhales. Shaky again. “Yes.”
She looks at him, then away again. “Can you promise me something?”
“I can try.”
“Be careful,” she says, her voice soft and head shaking slowly. “For me. And for him. Even if…”
Anakin. His anger, so quick and hot. But Obi-Wan doesn’t need to be told.
“He’ll come around,” she finishes. “He…”
She doesn’t know when she began struggling to finish sentences. But what she means to say is this:
He loves you.
She hopes Obi-Wan doesn’t need to be told that either.
He goes home. Leaves behind a friend on the porch step, with a thank you and an i’m sorry and she waves away both.
She squeezes his hand once, and he pretends his eyes don’t grow warm and wet again as he starts away.