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"And I say your name in hopes you'll hear it in the stars, and carry me out."
A man stands on a mountain of rock and rubble. Rivers of lava flow around him, and occassionally burst in small geysers safely out of his reach. Though, it wouldn't matter anyway, if it hit him. He would only feel its energy. His era of pain, suffering, hate, and exhaustion was finally over. The Force had decided he was worth another chance.
Anakin had left the scene of his own funeral for good reason. Yes, he took deep pride in being able to see his children again, and to stand beside Obi-Wan as if he wasn't his master's deepest stain in his heroic legacy - but after a certain point, he just couldn't handle it. He couldn't handle standing among Jedi far more important, more respected, more innocent than himself. He left his own funeral because the only person he deserved to stand with was himself. And that's exactly what he chose to do. He didn't even necessarily mindfully choose this place to reminisce on everything he had lost, and everything he had taken from others. The Force was funny, like that. It knew what you wanted even when you didn't. It knew what you needed even when you didn't want to acknowledge it.
It was almost peaceful, in a way, standing among the molten rock and churning lava that had killed Anakin Skywalker and birthed Darth Vader. Though, Anakin figured the pleasantness was mostly due to the fact that without physically manifested nostrils, he could easily ignore the rancid smell of sulfur from every crevice of the planet. That definitely helped.
Staring out from among a relatively high mound of rock, he could easily view the stirring lava bed he so vividly remembered clawing at to save himself so many years ago. Keeping himself alive was a success. "Saving himself" was not. He couldn't tell if he was lucky to be rescued from the edge of death due to his own overwhelming rage, or the exact opposite. After all, everything that followed watching his master's disowning steps away from the bank wasn't much better than submitting to the fire.
"I thought I might find you here."
Anakin didn't need to turn around to know who spoke. It was the same chiding voice some desolate island in his heart had longed to hear ever since Order 66. Not the scornful tone of "Ben Kenobi", but the gentle cadence of Obi-Wan that had led him through most of his disorienting adolescence. His master.
His single biggest regret.
Anakin could feel a faint buzzing within himself - his consciousness reacting to the voice in a way he refused to admit to himself.
"You followed me here to forsake me," Anakin accused. He kept his head down, staring unblinkingly at the site of his death. His first death. The death of all that was good inside him.The death of his devotion to Obi-Wan, to Padme, to anyone but himself and The Emperor.
"I did no such thing, Anakin."
Another vague buzz within. Some sort of emotion, he could sense. Not one he had a name for, these new energies within him would certainly need to be studied. He only knew it has been a long time since he had heard his own name from anyone but his son. Especially from Ben.
He turned to face his brother.
Obi-Wan had reclined against a shapeless clump of rocks, unconcerned with the heat or the soot. He's been deceased for longer than Anakin, so he most likely grew accustomed to the physical planes having no affect on him by this point. If he wasn't, he would've complained about his best robes being ruined by the coal and ash around him by now. Anakin almost smiled thinking of it. Almost.
"I'm hurt you'd ever think of me to be that petty, honestly. I may have my moments, but I wouldn't stoop that low, now, would I?" Obi-Wan continued. Anakin didn't understand how he could be so casual at a time like this. So innocent and easy, as if he wasn't feeling a thing. He knew that to be a lie. It was a product of the Jedi, surely. An effect of being groomed to reject any emotion that wasn't a path to inner peace. Anakin studied him, searching his old friend for any sign of hate. Of betrayal, dismissal, disgust. There was nothing.
"Why are you here?"
"I wanted to be where you are."
It sounded so simple, coming from him. Why was he pretending any of this was simple?
"Stop, Obi-Wan. Just stop." Anakin stepped up the small hill to face the other, hand instinctively resting over his saber hilt in his belt. He noticed Obi-Wan's eyes briefly flash with alarm. It must have been a shock to him, watching his old pupil advance on him looking exactly as he did the last time they had met on Mustafar. The same physical appearance - though, no scar on his face and no prosthetic hand. The same inner conflict, emotional turmoil, confusion in who to trust. Obi-Wan only smiled looking into this mirror of the past, and the panic in his eyes quickly subsided - or maybe was covered with something else. He couldn't pretend to know what.
"If you had been taken here, I can only guess what's going through your mind," Obi-Wan stated, chest falling slowly as if he was taking a steadying breath. He then paused thoughtfully, looking Anakin up and down with concern. "Though, I'd rather hear it from you."
Anakin felt disarmed. That was the emotion, surely. Surprised, vulnerable. He dropped his hand from the hilt, and took a single step back, eyes not leaving Kenobi. He wanted nothing more than to suppress the instinctual urge to accept Obi-Wan as the leader in this situation. He could feel the need for guidance within himself, and he ignored it. He didn't need his master. He needed control. He needed respect. He couldn't be respected if he were someone's lap dog, could he?
"I know, I know. All those years of passing by one another, not communicating a thing, and all. I'm aware I sound like an old kook, but I'd like you to hear me out."
"Why should I?" Anakin frowned. This was a trick. He wasn't sure how, or why, but it had to be. Nothing had ever been this simple.
"Because you deserved it then." Obi-Wan nodded his head towards the lava river. "And I'm a firm believer in closure. For the both of us."
Against his will, Anakin felt his guard soften. What is it that Obi-Wan would really do to harm him? He was visibly older now, appearing the exact way Vader had last defeated him. And, if it came to it, he could do it again. He could defend himself. That's what it was, right? Defense. Defense against his past, against the hurt, against the consequences of his actions. If Kenobi took a single step out of line, he could find a way to wreak havoc - despite how "peaceful" it was meant to be, to be part of The Force. He would make Obi-Wan suffer if he so deserved it.
"Sit, Anakin."
Anakin sat. He couldn't tell if he was more surprised at the earth beneath him actually holding him up, or how quickly he had obeyed his old tutor.
"Tell me. Why are you here?" Obi-Wan smiled wisely, leaning softly toward his pupil.
Anakin hesitated to answer. He had no choice in the matter, why did Kenobi act as though he did? As if he came here of his own will - one he didn't know how to control yet, if ever?
"I," Anakin began, turning his gaze so he couldn't look Obi-Wan in the eyes. He wasn't ready for that intimacy. The way Obi-Wan looked at you as though he could see all your potential, everything you were always meant to be. He couldn't do it. He knew all he would find was failure. Disappointment. "This place is important to me." That much had to have been true, whether it was intentional or not. It was the only truth he could reach.
"Why?"
"Why are you suddenly so interested in my emotions?" Anakin retorted, more frustrated with himself than he was with Obi-Wan. But he couldn't aim his frustration at himself, that wasn't productive. It was productive to throw it at another target. "All my life, I was taught my emotions would only lead to destruction. Of myself, of others. The council taught me that. You taught me that."
"It seems the time for destruction has already passed, has it not?" Kenobi arched a brow, crossing his arms and leaning back against the rock mound. Despite the defensive stance, he looked...comfortable. He still wasn't angry. How?
"So what, now that I'm too far gone, you want an explanation? Now that the worst has already happened, you want to prevent it?"
"You're projecting your own guilt onto me. I'm not bothered by it."
"I am not," Anakin huffed, narrowing his gaze at nothing in particular. He fought the temptation to roll his eyes childishly.
"The past has already been written, Anakin. Our story is already over. I only want to hear from you. If you aren't ready for it, I'll leave."
Don't.
Anakin's soul had leapt, at that. A desperate lurch as if his heart was throwing itself into Kenobi, a reaching grasp from within Anakin's deepest desires. He couldn't control it. He couldn't ignore it. If Obi-Wan left, he would be alone. And though that's what he came here for, he realized that's not what he'd be leaving here with. Now, it was Anakin's turn to take an unnecessary steadying breath. The Force gave him a chance for a reason. Luke gave him a chance for a reason. The least he could do was honor the risk he took in believing in him.
"I lost everything, here," he confessed. "I hoped...I hoped that I could somehow find it, again."
"Any luck?" Obi-Wan's mouth quirked up a bit, knowingly.
"I don't know yet", the younger admitted.
Obi-Wan and Anakin both turned their heads, looking out at the river from their own opposite places in the rock and coal. They sat in silence for some time, and yet despite not speaking a word to one another, Anakin could feel their connection growing. He could feel their balance with one another uniting again, becoming whole and comfortable with one another's presence in the realm. He wondered if all these new sensations and awarenesses were always available to him, while living. If he could have always known exactly when their time with one another was over, and when it was beginning again. If they had just been buried under layer after layer of grief, of hate, of hopelessness. How much of that was his own fault, and how much was the Emperor's? How deep had he really been in the comfort of his downfall?
"I must admit, I was surprised to have seen you." Obi-Wan clearly remained the more talkative of the two. One would think the wise hermit would be the silent type, too. In this case, that was clearly wrong.
"I shouldn't be here." Anakin was no longer speaking only of Mustafar. Obi-Wan knew it, too.
"If you're here, then you are meant to be here. I wouldn't argue with that."
"It's only because of Luke, that I am", Anakin turned his head back to his master. "Here, I mean."
"As much as I love that kid, I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one," Obi-Wan seemed to smile with his eyes. The creases near them shifted. "You saved yourself just as much as he saved you, and as you saved him from Darth Sidious. It's all sort of...poetic, in that way."
Anakin was silent. There were a million things he wanted to say in rebuttal to this, but for whatever reason, he didn't give them the air they craved.
"You made a choice, Anakin. You made the right one. It doesn't matter how you got there, or what you did before it. The choice you made then, to step in front of Luke, to stand with him against The Emperor - it was the most important choice you could have ever made. It was the most difficult. And you did it. You brought balance to The Force just as it was told you would."
Now, Anakin was truly speechless. How was he supposed to accept that? How was he meant to believe such high praise from the one who had once looked at him with such disdain on lava bed just ahead of them? After everything he's done, after everyone he's killed, after everything he's stripped away from both his son and daughter - none of that mattered? Of course it mattered. It mattered to the families of every youngling in the Jedi temple. It mattered to every innocent being on Alderaan. Just because he was cursed to be the chosen one didn't mean he was the only one in the entire galaxy that mattered. He took people's lives like he was breaking plastic toys. He destroyed people's planets like he was crushing eggs beneath his feet. All of it, for what? For the girl he'd already lost? For the fleeting feeling of revenge? It didn't justify a damn thing.
"Balance...doesn't necessarily mean fairness." Obi-Wan spoke quietly, as if he was trying to come up with wise words on the spot. It was admittedly a little funny.
"That doesn't make any sense at all," Anakin couldn't suppress a smile, but he tried to force it down, which caused a sort of strained smirk to show on his face.
Obi-Wan chuckled. "Good, because neither did the prophecy in the first place, if I may be frank."
And - there on the hills of Mustafar, only a few feet away from the breaking point of the relationship between Master and Padawan - a miracle happened. Anakin and Obi-Wan's apprehension melted away together, and they laughed. They looked at each other, smiled at one another kindly, and laughed. It was as if nothing had been broken between them at all - as if they'd always been two halves of one barely functioning whole. Anakin laughed the longest out of the both of them, laughed so hard his chest contracted and he needed to double over and hold himself to regain stability.
And he began to cry.
Tears manifested in his eyes and trickled down his cheeks unstoppably, exposing his despair through sobs and wails. He leaned forward until his chest made contact with his knees and he cradled himself, sobbing every ounce of emotion that he had ever kept locked in his metal respiration suit out of his body until he was cleansed. He wanted to scream. He wanted to rid himself of everything he had ever felt in his life, he wanted it all gone.
"Anakin?" Obi-Wan placed a cautious hand on Anakin's back, shifting to share his space. "Anakin." He then moved to kneel in front of Anakin, gripping onto his shoulders and searching his eyes with his own. Anakin couldn't look at him. He could only keep crying.
Before he could attempt to hide himself, Obi-Wan was lunging at him. For a moment, Anakin thought he was being attacked - he thought he had been tricked after all, and would be strangled in this uncontrollable burst of vulnerability. And then Obi-Wan had his arms around him. They squeezed him with concern, not threat. His former master was...holding him. Clutching onto him as if it was grounding, as if he needed it just as much as Anakin refused to acknowledge he did. He didn't know whether he should push him off or bring him closer. So he did nothing. He cradled himself, and settled gently against Obi-Wan's hold, and cried softer now. Cried for the memories with his master he had lost all right to make when he became Vader. Cried for the life he could have led with Padme, and his two spunky, incredible twin children. Cried for all he didn't realize he had missed the most.
"What is it, Anakin? What's wrong?" Obi-Wan's tone almost sounded scolding, but Anakin knew it wasn't the voice of a chiding parental figure. It was a genuine need to comfort the very man who had slain him.
Anakin could hardly come up with the words he knew he needed, much less speak them into existence.
He knew this one breakthrough would be far from enough to fully forgive himself for all he's done as Vader. There was a long path ahead of him, to be in a place where he could consider himself healing. But, as his master has taught him, this was an important first step. He made a choice, to let Obi-Wan in. To be real and genuine with him. To let him see one of the many parts of himself that the Jedi had taught him to compartmentalize. And he wasn't ostricized, or belittled, or rejected for it. He could give these parts to his friend, and he would hold them for him.
Maybe that was all he ever needed someone to do.
After only a small moment of hesitation, Anakin removed his arms out from between them, and rested them on Kenobi's back. They were embracing, now, on the very planet they had both in one way or another left each other for dead.
In a similarly rare moment of authenticity, Obi-Wan spoke in a dazed, puzzled voice.
"...Anakin?
"I missed you," Anakin buried his head in the space between Obi-Wan's neck and shoulder, voice muffled and yielding to the desperate need for guidance. "...Master."