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Here is what happens after the funeral.
There are voices. I’m sorry for your loss gets said about a thousand times. There are hands on shoulders, and tears, and whispers, and a few bold individuals who think now is a good time to tell their own personal stories of what he meant to them. There are casseroles delivered to his quarters, as if he’ll be on Coruscant long enough to eat them. And there are eyes on him. All the time. Waiting to see if he’ll cry, if he’ll lose it, if he’s grieving appropriately. If he’ll break.
Anakin doesn’t really process any of this though. He doesn’t even think he responds, beyond maybe nodding his head or pursing his lips. And the moment the burial is over and enough Jedi have started to leave that his exit doesn’t look too eager, Anakin is out the door.
He leaves the burial chamber first. And he thinks he’s going back to his quarters, that he’ll lock the door and ignore any more casserole deliveries or Yoda’s insistence that he meditates or Ahsoka’s awkward concern, but he doesn’t do that either. He passes the turn he should’ve made to go there. And before he can consciously make the decision to do it he’s leaving the Temple altogether, down the endless main staircase and into the streets of the city, into the fray.
Here is what no one tells you about grief: there is so much overthinking.
They say it’s like this—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and so on. And it is, or maybe he thinks, it will be. But within them there’s so much back and forth, this cruel tug-of-war between I should have done things differently and I should have told him I— and This isn’t real and This is my fault and It isn’t and I don’t know what to do now.
Anakin’s brain has absolutely not shut up since he made it down from that rooftop and saw his Padawan cradling Obi-Wan Kenobi on the ground. And he doesn’t expect it to start now.
No heads turn when he enters the pub, and he takes a seat at the bar with a nod to the bartender. It’s dark in here, and that’s a comfort. No one can see him clearly, for once. The bartender asks what he’ll have, and Anakin murmurs, “Whiskey on the rocks,” even though that’s Obi-Wan’s drink of choice, never his own. The bartender scoops the ice and pours the liquor and slides the glass along the table, and Anakin doesn’t even feel the cold against his hand.
There’s a game on, and most of the others sitting at the bar have their eyes trained on that. Anakin doesn’t pay them much attention. His hood is still drawn, and he keeps it that way.
Which is why he’s even more surprised when the person beside him leans in and presses their shoulder against his.
“I didn’t think you drank whiskey.”
Anakin will not admit this, when asked later. But he jumps.
“Whoa, there. Apologies,” says the voice of his companion. “Didn’t think it was possible to startle a Jedi.”
“How’d you know I’m—”
And then he turns, and beneath her hooded cloak, he sees them—two blue eyes. Blonde hair swept into a low bun.
“Satine,” he breathes—relieved, and horrified. “I didn’t—”
“When you sat down I assumed you knew it was me. Guess I was wrong.”
She swirls her drink—whatever it is, a dark purple. She tosses it back.
Part of him wants to leave. He has no idea what he’s supposed to say to this woman, this—whatever she was to Obi-Wan. And it’s stupid, but part of him feels… possessive. Like, he wants her to know that she doesn’t have the right to grieve him the way Anakin does. That she didn’t know him the way Anakin does.
At least, that’s what he wants to think.
But instead, he takes another swallow of his own drink, chokes it down. And it’s Satine who speaks first.
“I thought you’d be with your Order. Or at least with Padmé, maybe.”
Anakin shrugs, and the bite of whiskey tamps down whatever anxiety he might have about what Satine knows. “Wanted to be alone.”
She nods. “Fair enough. Me too.”
“You probably shouldn’t be, though.”
“And why’s that?”
Anakin raises an eyebrow. “Aren’t people always trying to assassinate you?”
“Well,” Satine says with a shrug, “I’d say the same is true of you, isn’t it.”
“I don’t think it’s called assassination if I’m just a regular person.”
Satine snorts. “And you think you’re a regular person?”
Anakin huffs, but she isn’t wrong. And it’s funny, this Satine. This side of her, which he imagines most people don’t know. Maybe Obi-Wan did. Probably Obi-Wan did. But she’s here now—and the realness of her feels raw. He doesn’t know what to do with it.
He takes another swig of the whiskey and wonders how Obi-Wan even liked this. Then he processes that he thought it in past tense, and he’s back to this isn’t real and this is my fault and I don’t know what to—
“He was proud of you.”
The words jolt through Anakin like a lightning bolt. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Okay,” Satine said. “To be honest, I don’t either. I just thought…you should know.”
“I do know.”
“Okay,” she repeats. But Anakin isn’t really sure if that’s true—that Obi-Wan was proud of him, and that Anakin knows it. It’s one of those things where, if he asked, he’s sure Obi-Wan would have said yes. But knowing that and knowing it are two different things.
“I was surprised to see you there,” Anakin says, without really knowing why he’s saying it. “At the funeral. It was invitation only.”
“And obviously, I was invited,” Satine replies. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, weren’t you and Obi-Wan…don’t the Jedi kind of…?”
“Obi-Wan was right, you are a bit awkward about all this, aren’t you?” she says. And rolls her eyes, in a painfully familiar way. “We were lovers, yes, at some point. But we were also dear friends. I loved him until the very end. And last time I checked, the Jedi don’t have any problem with love.”
Anakin swallows. His mouth feels dry. “No,” he whispers. “They don’t. But it’s such a hard line to draw—where love ends and attachment begins. I don’t know how you could possibly—how could you love someone and also be willing to let them go? How does anyone? I don’t think…you can.”
His voice catches on the last word, and his swallows again. He’s made it three entire days without crying in front of anyone. No need to break the streak now.
Satine flags down the bartender, and he brings her another drink. She knocks it down in one chug.
“Well. I’m not a Jedi,” she says at last. “But as I understand it, it isn’t easy.”
“No,” Anakin says softly. “It’s not.”
And he isn’t even really doing it—he isn’t letting go. He has no idea how he’s supposed to do that, how he’s supposed to go back to the Temple and move on with his life and this war and face his Padawan—
As if reading his mind, Satine says, “How’s Ahsoka handling it?”
Anakin answers slowly, honestly, horrified at himself—but the whiskey keeps him honest. “I don’t know.”
He drops his head into his hands. And the overthinking whirs into overdrive— I should check on her. I should ask. I don’t think I can handle whatever she’ll say.
Satine’s elbow bumps his. “You know, he felt like this, too,” she says. “When you were small.”
Anakin lifts his head. “What?”
“He used to call me. And he didn’t—he didn’t know what to do. Qui-Gon was dead, and he wasn’t ready for this, and you were…”
Anakin’s not sure he can listen to this. Satine seems to sense this, and her voice trails off.
“No one ever teaches us how to lose them,” she says. “But we learn. He learned. And you will too.”
She shudders an exhale.
“We both will.”
Anakin pushes his empty glass away, and it tips over. The ice spills out. And he’s suddenly furious, that she can sound so calm, that she can put them on the same playing field, that she can act like—
“What do you know,” he hisses. “You didn't really know him. Our grief is not the same.”
“Of course not. I just meant to say—”
“I don’t need your comfort. I don’t need to be reminded that literally everyone is handling this better than me.”
“You can handle it whatever way you need to—”
“Just—stop.”
She does. They both do.
The bartender refills his drink. They sip in silence.
Anakin’s head is spinning now. He’s always been a lightweight, and Obi-Wan used to make fun of him for that, gently of course. While drinking him under the table. He realizes, on an objective level, that he’s being unreasonable. It’s often like this for him—he recognizes his own ridiculous, faulty logic. Sees the emotional lens through which he’s viewing everything. And still, that doesn’t stop it. Doesn’t prevent this—the spiral, the fallout.
He keeps drinking anyway, and ignores the harshness of his own voice as the words tumble out. “It just feels like…like, it’s so—”
He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say. But Satine is patient.
“Empty?” He finishes it as a question, as if she’ll be able to confirm that he’s chosen the right word. He sloshes another sip of whiskey into his mouth. “Like, you do all of this. You try to be good, and to make the right choices, and you think if you do that then it’s okay. But then—the people you love just get hurt anyway. You can’t stop them from hurting, and dying, no matter how good you are. You can be so good the whole galaxy applauds you and it still isn’t good enough to stop—”
His voice cracks again, and this time he’s not fast enough to stop the tears from rushing to his eyes. They don’t fall—he blinks them back.
Satine’s voice is brittle too as she whispers. “I know.”
It feels like it’s all been wasted. Like his whole life has been an attempt to love these people he’s lost anyway. And he doesn’t know—he doesn’t know. There’s no end to that sentence. It’s a sentence itself.
It occurs to him that Satine probably does know—at least, to some degree, what this feeling is like. For there to have been some different path she could’ve taken, one where Obi-Wan would’ve still been alive. But he can’t find the words to articulate this to her, or maybe he just doesn’t want to. His vision’s still blurry and wet. His eyes won’t find hers.
Still, he tells her this. “He loved you.”
“I know.”
And he wonders if, like him, she isn’t sure either. Or maybe, if it all feels like a dream now, distant and blurry and imaginary.
He knows he should give her more. That he should ask her how she’s really doing, tell her he’s sorry and that she does have a right to grieve him too, that he doesn’t know why he said what he said before. But the awful thing is, he doesn’t have the energy. That’s something no one tells you about grief either: you don’t know how to be yourself anymore. How to do the things you know you should. How to apologize when grief becomes your words and your actions and your heart.
Silently, he finishes his drink. It’s his fifth. Or possibly sixth. And finally, asks the only thing he can force himself to say.
“Do you have a ride home?”
Satine shrugs. “My pilot’s at the Temple. I’m staying in the Dignitaries’ Suites in the Senate Dome.”
He nods. And suddenly he feels so stupid—he’s sitting here in a dive bar with the one person in the galaxy who might actually understand the enormous black hole in his chest, and he somehow hasn’t managed to say a single thing that matters. He wants to cry. Wants to tell her every single memory that’s popped into his head these past few days, how Obi-Wan couldn't stand mustard on his sandwiches, how Obi-Wan rubbed his back all night when he was up sick with the stomach bug when he was ten, how Obi-Wan used to drum his fingers on the controls of the ship because piloting made him nervous, how Obi-Wan’s laugh sounded like every good thing in the galaxy piled together. How losing him felt like he’d been hollowed out, like a lightsaber had swept through his insides and cauterized the wound, leaving only this empty, burnt up thing in his chest where his heart should be.
Satine’s eyes are red. She finishes her drink.
Anakin stands and pushes in his bar stool and draws his hood back up to his ears as he says, softly, “I’ll walk you there.”