Chapter Text
It is quiet in the valley. And yet he does not fear what the silence reveals. In the silence, something stirs. It is a moonlit song, a song of all things, that illuminates the dark of this, the darkest night. As he lies dying, he hears it: a soft and haunting melody swirling around him. His body lies in an unusual repose, his right arm slung across his chest and his left stretched out, fingers clawing at the dirt. It is a picture of mortal anguish, or rebelling against the gnawing pain of the wound he has suffered. He is an unwilling audience for this tragically beautiful performance. But he has made his peace with his death. After years of endless war, it greets him as a friend.
It is quiet in the valley, and he feels relieved in the end. Because what else is there now? When the trappings of their grand Republic have all been burnt away to ash, this is what remains: pain and blood. His entire existence has narrowed to these two things. Blood seeps from a wound he has lost the strength to keep pressure on. Pain is first unbearable, then all at once it begins to dim as reality slips like sand through his fingertips. Night falls, and he floats in and out of consciousness, in the current of the force.
Distantly, he feels a familiar presence. He blinks, and perhaps a day has passed in that blink, or perhaps just minutes, but that presence is right beside him now, and he thinks perhaps it is good that he won't die alone. Hands on his face, his neck, frantic. He barely feels them against his cold, numbing skin. Hands pressed to his wound now, and that he does feel. The sharp intensity of that pain brings him back from the brink enough for him to gasp a strong breath, fill his lungs with vital air. He teeters, but does not fall into darkness.
Sound returns briefly and it is a familiar voice next to his ear, mingling with his own labored breaths, urgent but gentle in a way that he has not heard before. "I know, I know it hurts. Hold on to that. Hold on to whatever you can, do you hear me, Kenobi?"
* * *
He is just a boy, wreaking havoc in the quiet sanctuary of the temple, upending the stately moral order of things for no reason but the fact that he is unhappy and bored. He is endlessly bright, but that is not enough. There is a mischief in his eyes that should never be, a defiance in his step that any discerning Jedi would be wary of. None of the knights or the masters want such a headache of a padawan, despite his test scores and his proficiency in a wide range of lightsaber forms. His power is raw and elemental, capable of being shaped into anything, yet he is a risk that most are unwilling to take.
He is just a boy, reckless and stubborn and too smart for his own good, and Qui-Gon takes him anyway. And in his own unorthodox way, he shapes and hones Obi-Wan into a Jedi worth something.
He is a young man, and this is the closest he has ever come to having a family.
He is a young man, and it is all stripped from him in a blink. His chest is tight with the guilt that remains; he can hardly breathe with it. I could not protect him. He receives notability and a knighthood for killing a Sith, but he does not see the victory in what happened on Naboo. How could it be a victory when so much was lost?
So much was lost, but the real gift that Qui-Gon had given him was the impetus to go on when all else has failed you. So he does not give into the darkness that reaches for him, plucking like a specter at the hems of his clothing, beckoning with sharp bony fingers. Instead, he does better. Better than his master before him, better than any would have imagined a young, strong-willed Jedi could have done. He sets his own grief aside, raises and trains a boy not much younger than himself.
He joins a war, becomes a general, fights so many battles that some nights, all he sees is death when he closes his eyes. Lives are placed in the palm of his hand. Lives of good men. Men who would die for him and who would die for a cause that is much bigger than any of them. If he clenches his fist just too tight, they would all be dead. It is too much power, he thinks even then, but who else would do it?
He loses people. So many people. But he keeps going. Because his life is not about him, he has learned. Because beyond the horizon there is always another fight looming, and on every planet, even to the darkest reaches of space, there is someone worth protecting.
* * *
He is stubborn if he is anything. Perhaps this is what keeps him clinging to life. Consciousness comes and goes, but distantly he is aware of a searing pain, and then itchy gauze being pressed to his wound and wrapped gently around his torso. There is a presence he should know moving him from what he had thought would be his final resting place. The smell of grass and blood fades. The movement is smooth at times and jarring at other times. He cries out just once, and a voice answers not unkindly. Comprehending its words is beyond him now, but there is a gentleness in them. A familiarity that is almost comforting.
The world comes back in bits and pieces. First, sound. The warble and chirp of native avian species, the whir of insects. Next, the red glow of a sun on the other side of eyelids he has not figured out how to open yet. Feeling returns then, and it is by far the least pleasant part. A dull ache in his chest, bone-deep. A much sharper ache in his abdomen, hot and itchy in the way only an open wound can be. For a moment he nearly loses himself in the pain.
"Breathe through it. That's it," a soft voice says. He heaves pained breaths, leaning on the Force for calm and clarity. The world tilts and then rights itself. He opens his eyes.
He blinks, and it takes the length of several heartbeats for him to realize he is looking at the face of Asajj Ventress. He frowns. "How..." he manages hoarsely.
"I was hunting a bounty and happened upon you in the valley. As for what happened ... I have my suspicions, but only you know the answer to that." Her eyes darken. Concern? He can't be sure. Things are going dim again.
"You should rest," she says softly. "We'll discuss it later." He could almost swear that he feels a hand brush lightly over his hair before he loses consciousness.
After a time of incomprehensible darkness, he blinks awake again. She is there, sitting in statuesque vigil by his bedside.
"How long?" he manages. The words scrape like sand in his throat.
"Six hours. It is evening. This world sleeps more than most. It is peaceful after dark." She checks his pulse. It looks natural enough that he assumes she's formed a habit of it somewhere between here and there.
"Why did you save my life?" he asks.
She frowns. Perhaps she hasn't considered the question before now. "It never crossed my mind not to," she says simply.
* * *
Pain greets him like an old friend at dawn, wrapping its cold, stiff arms around him. He shivers. He finds her close by, ostensibly having fallen asleep while watching over him at the foot of his bed. Her back is against the wall and her arms crossed. There is a vague expression of concern across her sleeping face.
For the first time, he notices his surroundings. The stone walls of a modest hut surround them, hugging tightly, supporting a low sloping roof. A central cooking element set into the floor serves the dual purpose of light and heat. There is one window covered with a thin curtain, through which the gauzy glow of dawn is beginning to seep.
He watches her face, lacking its characteristic scorn. Her hair, now past her shoulders is gathered in a single silvery braid adorned with a leather band which bears a symbol he cannot decipher.
His mind turns to the last time he had seen her. They'd crossed paths briefly in Coruscant's dark underbelly months ago. She had freed herself from Dooku. There was an ease to her posture that was not there before, and a sureness in her step. They'd spoken only briefly, and the exchange had been mostly void of hostility. Looking at her softened face now, his mind is alight with questions that his memories are insufficient to give answer to.
She wakes when the sun hits her face, eyes snapping open quietly. Meeting his gaze: "It's impolite to stare," is her mild reproof.
"I'm sorry. I'm only trying to figure out ... how."
She leans forward, and there is that shadow again. Her eyes are dark with it. Could it really be concern? "What do you remember?" she asks with the solemnity of one who looks at a dead man.
Partial memories come back in blood-red flashes. Blaster fire. Voices that he should recognize. A feeling of betrayal and horrible, horrible guilt. But he cannot piece them together, finds it all too exhausting. He shakes his head.
A hand moves through his hair, locates a tender spot that makes him wince. "Well, you did hit your head when you fell. You'll remember in time." She is hovering closely over him. There is something deeply sad in her eyes that he cannot reconcile with their circumstances. It fills him with unease, but he is too exhausted to parse through such a multi-layered thing.
* * *
Bits and pieces return on the wings of fever in the night. Those voices, he knows them now. But where were they? They must still be out there, waiting for him. They must need his help.
Indistinct yelling fills his ears, muffled until everything comes into sharp, sudden focus. Hands gripping, pressed against his shoulders, and he is fighting against them because he must get to his men. He must say it aloud, because Ventress is there in front of him, and there are tears in her eyes, not yet shed. He wonders what they are for.
"They're dead Obi-Wan. They're all dead."
The fight leaves him, adrenaline wearing off and and pain taking its place. He groans through gritted teeth and her hands are gentle when they help to lower him back onto the mattress. A hand against his cheek, on his forehead brushing sweat-soaked hair away. What had he done to deserve such gentleness from her?
"I'm sorry," he hears as a cool, empty darkness settles in.
* * *
He wakes with a start, cold in the absence of fever. The abdominal wound is less a raging fire than a small nagging flame thanks to the numbing agent she had applied to it. His head pounds, but it is clear. Casting his eyes around, he finds her sitting in a rough-hewn chair by the foot of the bed. She is watching him intently, waiting in dreaded anticipation, it seems, for something.
Something lurks at the back of his mind. In truth it has loomed over the both of them since he first awoke. He turns his attention to it now, able to put it off no longer. A memory, mercilessly complete, emerges like a fell creature from unknown depths. All at once, the events of the last week come back to him.
It is pure agony to remember.
* * *
Anakin was a quiet and sensitive boy. In those fragile early days, he cried in the night for his mother. Obi-Wan used to lie awake in the small hours of the night, listening to the muffled sobs coming from the other side of the room. Anakin thought he didn't know. Ashamed, he hid his tears, saved them for the dark when no one could see. He always cared deeply what Obi-Wan thought of him, whether he cared to admit it or not. It was especially bad in the beginning.
For months, Anakin trained and struggled to acclimate to temple life. And at night he cried for the mother they'd taken him from. It was not for him to question, but Obi-Wan carried many quiet reservations in those days. Frustration mounted. Obi-Wan got the sense of one thing after another being piled atop his shoulders. Collapse was imminent. Anakin never released any of it as he should.
It came to a head one evening in their chambers. Any attempt Obi-Wan had made at conversation that night fell face-first onto the cold tile floor in the space between them. Anakin was brooding even then. Such darkness in a child. But Obi-Wan had pushed away every concern out of duty to Qui-Gon. He did a lot of things out of duty to Qui-Gon in those days. In some ways, Obi-Wan resented the man for leaving so much of himself behind.
Finally, Obi-Wan said it. "Anakin, tell me what's wrong."
It was a reasonable request, met with a baleful glare. "There's nothing wrong."
"Yes of course there is. You barely touched your dinner and you haven't spoken two words tonight."
"Dinner was gross. That was three words."
Obi-Wan was quick-tempered. A simple fact of his nature that over two decades of training had helped to mitigate. None of that training could have prepared him for Anakin, though. A hundred years couldn't have prepared him for the reality of what he was doing here: he was raising someone else's child.
Such a difficult child. Words, spoken of Obi-Wan as a youngling. The resentment over those words had faded, but the memory of the emotions they had evoked remained. He'd already resolved never to make Anakin feel that way. He'd closed his eyes briefly, released some of that irritation already rising to the surface. Imagined it seeping out of him, like being cleansed of a harmful toxin. "Anakin,” he'd said gently then, "Master Mundi prepared the meal tonight. He worked for many hours on it."
"Well he should've worked more."
"Anakin," he'd said in a warning tone. This wasn't about the food, but disrespect couldn't be tolerated.
Anakin resolutely ignored him.
"Anakin, tell me what is bothering you."
Anakin had slammed the holopad he'd been diligently not reading down on the bed beside him. "Nothing."
"Anakin."
"Stop doing that! There's nothing wrong! there can never be anything wrong! We all have to be perfect and not feel anything like droids!"
Obi-Wan had frowned, and in the thick silence that followed he'd walked slowly over to his padawan and sat next to him. "Who told you that Jedi aren't supposed to feel anything?"
"Everyone! Every day at training I get lectured about my emotions."
"Anakin, we are human, you and I. We cannot help that we feel. Nor is it wrong to feel. What is wrong is to let your emotions take all control from you, and that is why we release them into the force. It is for our benefit, and the masters who instruct you only want what is best for you. As do I."
"Do you still miss Master Qui-Gon?" Anakin had said then, so softly Obi-Wan had almost missed it.
It wan't the response he'd been expecting. "Yes ... of course I do."
"How do you handle it?"
"I release it to the force."
"But ... don't you feel like you're throwing him away when you do that?"
With an ache in his heart Obi-Wan realized.
"No, of course not. Just because I refuse to be ruled by how much I miss him does not mean that I don't. I try to honor his sacrifice every day by committing myself to my duties, by becoming the best Jedi I can be."
Anakin had nodded quietly
"It is not a shameful thing to miss someone, Anakin. But you cannot let it govern your every thought and action. Do you understand?"
He nodded again.
"Look at me."
He did, with those wide blue eyes. Obi-Wan had put a hand on his shoulder. "It will get better. It will. Do you trust me?"
"Yes of course, Master." It was an immediate response. Obi-Wan was perhaps the only one in his life that he trusted at that time.
"Good. Then meditate with me."
* * *
An errant tear falls, and he allows himself this. He mourns his friend, his brother. He mourns the little boy with sad eyes and a tender heart who had only missed his mother. He mourns the brother who will never know his sister, and the sister who will never know her brother. Both born into a generation that may never know freedom.
* * *
There is a wind blowing from the north, bringing a chill down with it. He shivers, and he thinks perhaps he should have died in that valley. Time moves forward at an unfamiliar pace. He blinks and night is setting in. The chill makes its home deep in his bones.
He is not wearing his tunic, which had been destroyed in the firefight, only the bacta bandages that had been wrapped around his torso. A thick blanket is being thrown over him now. She's found him. "Kenobi, this is no way to die," she admonishes, warm hands cupping his face. "Come inside."
He hears it from a great distance. More immediate is the sound of blaster fire.
* * *
Somehow they had found him. He'd waited too long, allowing too many hits before striking them down. It was foolish, but how could he kill them? These men who had no control over their actions. How many of them had he fought alongside, spoken to, laughed with?
Good men, created to be unquestioning instruments of death. But that is what the Jedi had become, in the end. They were no better. He was no better.
* * *
"Obi-Wan."
The voice startles him out of that haze of recollection. She has never called him that before, he thinks with a sense of detachment, strangely numb to the hands rubbing up and down his arms, attempting to return circulation.
"Obi-Wan, look at me. We need to get inside."
He looks at her, really looks at her, and sees a different person beneath those ice-blue eyes. Perhaps it is someone he can trust. He nods. He accepts her hand up.
* * *
“The temperature drops severely at night this time of year. I didn't get time to mention that before you ... left. The two suns, they are far away. Not like the twin suns of Tattooine." She keeps up a steady flow of noise as she busies herself starting the heating pit. He sits nearly comatose at the breakfast table and watches blankly, the occasional chill shuddering over him.
The heating unit whirs to life. She returns to him and helps him over to sit next to her on the tiered steps in front of it.
She is silent, watching the pot sitting atop the heating unit just to have something to do. Her thoughts churn; he can feel them like they are his own though he is numb to so many other things.
There is a lightness in her being that was not there before. Unfettered by the dark side, she nearly glows. He has only seen her in shadow before now. If grief weren't burrowing into his chest, carving through bone and muscle to eat away at the very heart of him, he would perhaps be in awe of the beauty of this change.
She is placing a bowl in his hands. It warms his hands, and its fragrant steam warms his face. The smell is familiar. He realizes why. It's tiingilar. A Mandalorian recipe. An old wound in his chest pangs, a phantom pain eclipsed by more immediate devastation.
"Bounty hunters trade more amongst themselves than credits and blows. Often a good recipe is a currency of its own," she says quietly. "You should try to eat something. I don't have any vitaboosters. I meant to go into town for some. Never did."
He stares down into his bowl but does not touch its contents. She sighs. It sounds weary.