Work Text:
Obi-Wan woke to the sound of metal groaning. It was distinctive; the insistent creak of a material pushed to its breaking point, before the eventual snap as the two pieces split in half. Gradually, other sounds began to filter through the static in his head, as well as the insistent stab of a headache. Starting just behind his left eye, it spread its fingers into the back of his skull, ending just at the base of his neck. Through the fuzz of the migraine, he registered the distinctive rustle of leaves in a breeze, and the cool caress of wind over his face.
That was strange. He didn’t remember falling asleep outside.
The crash, whispered the part of him which was aware enough to recall it. Obi-Wan’s temple throbbed in tandem with the spike of alarm that ran through him. He forced his heavy eyelids apart even as everything in him protested the idea, and stared up into a night sky lit by stars and the engines of Star Destroyers and Dreadnoughts. They were so low in the planet’s orbit that each engine looked like a glowing moon, lit in blues and reds respectively.
They had crashed while leading an assault on the Separatist defensive line—him and…
Anakin. Ahsoka.
Obi-Wan sat up, the alarm morphing into something much sharper. His movements quickly proved to be an unwise decision, though, when he hunched forward, gut roiling and eyes squeezing shut to combat the spots that danced across his vision. Force, he felt terrible.
The groaning metal—something that had become unintentional background noise compared to the racing of his thoughts—stopped entirely.
“Master!” exclaimed a voice that was far too distraught for Obi-Wan’s liking. It was wobbly and vaguely wet, and it set the hairs on the back of his neck prickling with worry. He cracked his eyes open again and peered in the direction of the voice.
There, kneeling on top of the crumpled wreckage of a starfighter—right by the pilot’s cockpit—was Ahsoka. Her eyes were damp, glittering in the starlight, and soot smeared her skin like paint. There was a line of dried blood running down the side of her face. The expression that she wore was something that, in the few months of her apprenticeship to Anakin, Obi-Wan had never seen before.
He felt the alarm and worry sharpen further inside of him, the edges digging up into his ribcage, despite how foggy his thoughts were. “Padawan—”
“I can’t get him out!” she said, her voice saturated with barely restrained panic. “I— he’s too heavy, and I don’t want to hurt him but—”
“Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan said, and she stopped. “You must breathe.” He rose unsteadily to his feet, determined not to stumble despite how the ground felt like it was rippling beneath him.
Ahsoka watched him with wide eyes. “Master, you shouldn’t— shouldn’t be moving.”
“Nonsense,” he said, and slapped a smile across his face as he started towards her; it tasted false on his lips. “It’s nothing I can’t sleep off.”
Even in the dark, he could see the way she worried at the bottom of her lip. “But…”
Obi-Wan held up a hand to quiet her, then went about climbing up the side of the fighter, careful not to move too quickly in case his vertigo grew any worse. When he reached Ahsoka’s perch, he paused and put a hand on her arm, giving it a quick squeeze. “I’m fine, Padawan, I promise you. Are you alright?”
She blinked. “I’m— I’m fine…” She darted a glance at the pilot’s cockpit, and Obi-Wan finally saw what had her so worried.
Anakin was inside—like he had assumed—slumped against the wall of the interior, face slack and eyes closed. A thick line of blood ran from his hairline to his jaw, drying and beginning to flake in places, and there were the beginnings of a harsh starburst of discoloration forming along his temple and brow. If it hadn’t been for the rise and fall of his chest, Obi-Wan would have thought him dead.
An ache spread through the marrow of his ribs. Obi-Wan ignored it, and turned back to Ahsoka despite the worry that singed his insides. “We’re going to get him out,” he said. “But I need you to move to the ground first. Can you do that?”
“But I can help!” she protested.
“And you will. I need you down there to keep watch while I pull Anakin out. And besides,” he said, smiling, “it would be good to have someone at the base of the ship should I drop him. He’s quite heavy, after all.”
Ahsoka’s lips twitched, and Obi-Wan was relieved to see some of the tension in her shoulders dissolve. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, I can do that.”
As she scrambled back down the dented hull of the fighter, Obi-Wan took a discreet, calming breath through his nose. He had half expected her to put up more of a fight, but was grateful to be proven wrong. She didn’t need to know that he’d rather have her further from the ship should the engines decide to do anything more extreme than smoke. Like explode, he thought, but pushed the idea from his mind just as quickly as it had entered.
Turning back to Anakin, Obi-Wan took stock of everything in front of him. Ahsoka had managed to open the hatch to the cockpit, as well unbuckle all of the straps that kept Anakin tied to his seat, but little else beyond that. Cautiously, he tried to reach out into the Force to see if he could detect any unseen injuries, but only received a panging ache behind his eyes in return. His concussion—because that’s most certainly what this was—didn’t seem to like the idea of him reaching into the Force. It didn’t seem to like him doing much at all, in fact, but that was something he couldn’t afford to indulge right now.
Obi-Wan swallowed against his migraine, and reached out to lay a hand on Anakin’s cheek. “Padawan,” he murmured, wanting to give the boy a chance to wake up before he was dragged bodily from the fighter. “Anakin, can you hear me?”
No such luck beyond a twitch of the brows.
Obi-Wan released a quiet sigh, then set about manhandling Anakin from the cockpit. It was a difficult, precarious affair, what with Obi-Wan’s own unsteadiness and the awkward angle that he had to lift Anakin from. He pulled his former padawan out by his armpits, grunting with the effort, until he had managed to lay Anakin’s upper half over the edge of the hull. Then he began the arduous process of maneuvering him down the side of the fighter without allowing him to slide off, or keeling over himself. Through it all he felt Ahsoka’s concerned gaze, burning two holes into the space between his shoulder blades.
But finally, with sweat beading on his skin and the feeling of a nail having been driven between his brows, Obi-Wan managed to lay Anakin’s limp form flat on the ground. He very nearly collapsed next to him, but settled for kneeling instead. They couldn’t stay here—not when there was still the potential of Separatists finding them rather than the Republic—and if Obi-Wan allowed himself to relax completely, he wouldn’t be getting up again for a while.
Ahsoka sat across from him, hands twitching in her lap like she wanted to do something but didn’t quite know what. Her eyes kept flicking between Anakin and Obi-Wan, expression twisting with distress. “Master, are you alright?”
Obi-Wan waved a hand, stalling while he tried to chase some of the air back into his lungs. “Perfectly fine. As I said,” he breathed, “he’s quite heavy.”
This time there was no tentative quirk of Ahsoka’s lips. Instead, she peered at him with undisguised worry. “Are you sure? You don’t look very fine.”
“Well, I should hope I look at least a little ruffled after a landing like that,” he said, raising a wry brow. Ahsoka opened her mouth to respond, but Obi-Wan didn’t give her the opportunity; he pushed himself to his feet, no matter how much he felt like lying down. “Now, I would hate to be here if the Separatists come looking. Help me with him.”
Ahsoka looked between him and the unconscious form of her master before nodding. Together, the two of them managed to get Anakin upright, though it was Obi-Wan bearing most of his weight. His head hung limply between them, like a puppet with all of its strings cut. Obi-Wan forced himself to lock the flame of worry behind his ribs as they headed away from the crumpled remains of their starfighters. Anakin would be fine. He had to be.
***
It took some time for them to reach a place that Obi-Wan deemed satisfactory. He didn’t want to be too far from the crash site, so that they would know if the Republic came looking. However, he also didn’t want to be at the crash in case it was the Separatists.
The trees here were especially large, so much so that they mimicked the towering, imperious nature of many of Coruscant’s buildings. They curled up towards the sky with twisting trunks and reaching limbs, with leaves bigger than Obi-Wan’s head. He led them further into the forest until their fighters were hidden from sight, but not so far that they were out of his comm’s short range.
Eventually he settled on stopping in the hollow of a tree’s roots, the gnarled pieces of wood so large that the three of them were completely hidden from view. Obi-Wan slowly brought Anakin’s limp form to the ground again, and tugged his own robe off to ball it up behind the boy’s head. He brushed some of the hair from Anakin’s face, tilting his head to get a better look at the wound. From what he could tell, it was just a particularly nasty bump, one that must have glanced off of something sharp in the crash.
“Well,” he said once he was satisfied Anakin wasn’t in immediate danger of death, “this certainly isn’t how I imagined my evening going.”
“I hope Rex shot down the jerk who got us,” Ahsoka muttered, eyes fixed on her master’s face, brows pinched.
“Yes, I suspect he and Cody are making the Separatists’ lives rather difficult right now,” Obi-Wan said. He glanced up at the glow of the Venators’ engines in orbit; occasionally, the dark night sky would be lit by a flash of particularly aggressive blue or red. So the assault is still in progress then.
He turned to Ahsoka, who was back to gnawing at her lip as she watched Anakin, her narrow shoulders hunched. “Ahsoka,” he said gently, and her head snapped up to look at him. “You must be patient. Cody and Rex will find us as soon as they’ve finished with the Separatists. Anakin is going to be alright.”
“But what if they’re too late? What if they don’t make it in time?”
“When have you known Cody or Rex to be late to anything?” he replied, the corner of his lip curling into a half smile. When she didn’t respond beyond a deeply unhappy expression, Obi-Wan softened. “They’ll be here, Ahsoka”
She deflated, frame slumping like her bones had decided to lose all rigidity. “They better be,” she muttered.
“They will,” he said, then rubbed at his brow to try to alleviate some of the ache there. “Now, I think you should get some rest. Staying up and worrying isn’t going to do you any good.”
Ahsoka leveled him with a look that was much too similar to Anakin. “Isn’t that what you’re going to do?”
“No, I’m going to keep watch. If I worry, then it’s nothing more than a secondary affair.”
The flat, unimpressed quality to Ahsoka’s gaze increased. “I can keep watch. You’re hurt.”
“As are you,” Obi-Wan said, gesturing to the dried blood on her face. “And besides, I would feel much better if you were well-rested should anything happen. As your grandmaster, I insist.”
Ahsoka nearly scowled, but seemed to catch herself; she looked at Anakin again, whose chest was still rising and falling in a steady cadence. “… Fine,” she said. “But wake me up if anything happens. If…” she trailed off, but Obi-Wan understood.
“Of course,” he said. “Get some sleep, Ahsoka.”
She nodded stiffly, stress still radiating off of her in waves as she curled up beside her master. Obi-Wan leaned back further against the root, a sigh passing through his lips as he settled in. This was going to be a long night.
***
Anakin only woke once during their time there, and it was so fleeting that Obi-Wan didn’t even think to wake Ahsoka.
He had fallen into a semi-meditative state when he felt the side of his face prickle, like it always did when he knew someone was watching him. Cracking his eyes open, he looked down to meet the glassy gaze of Anakin.
His former padawan’s eyes were barely open—just small slivers of blue in the dark—but they were fixed on Obi-Wan despite how it seemed like fog was clouding the irises. “Master…?” he croaked, the word barely more than a breath.
Obi-Wan sat up, shuffling closer to Anakin as his heart began to thunder in his chest. “I’m here,” he said, laying a palm on Anakin’s cheek.
“I don’t…” He frowned, his blinks long and slow. “… I don’t feel right.”
Obi-Wan couldn’t help his huff of laughter. “Yes, I suspect that’s the concussion talking.”
“Concussion?” As Anakin spoke, his eyes slid shut. He pushed his face against Obi-Wan’s hand. “How’d I… get that?”
“You crashed your fighter.”
Obi-Wan felt Anakin’s mouth twitch against his skin. “Sounds about right,” he murmured.
“Perhaps try for a better landing next time,” Obi-Wan said. “We were concerned.”
“We?”
“Ahsoka is here too, dear one.”
Anakin’s eyes cracked back open, watching him without an ounce of clarity. “She okay?”
“She’s worried, but yes. She’s okay,” he said.
“You okay…?” Anakin asked, the crease between his brows deepening as his gaze darted across Obi-Wan’s face. Even half-lucid as he was, his concern was palpable.
Obi-Wan felt himself smile, small and soft. “Yes, Anakin. I’m okay.”
“Good,” Anakin said. His eyes closed again, and soon his breathing had evened back out into the rhythm of sleep. Obi-Wan let his hand linger against his padawan’s cheek for a moment longer before pulling away, allowing some of the tension coiled tight within him to loosen.
***
Obi-Wan woke to the sound of his comm buzzing. He blinked past the sticky feeling of his eyes, feeling vaguely disoriented. He couldn’t remember falling asleep, so when…?
The comm buzzed again, and he activated it before he had fully registered the action.
“General?” Cody’s voice filtered in, staticky and even more monotone sounding through the transmission. “General, are you there?”
“Yes Cody,” Obi-Wan said; the inside of his mouth felt dry, and he rubbed at his face to try and wake himself up a bit more. “I’m here.”
“Are you alright, General?”
“I’m fine. I take it you managed to rout the Separatists?”
“Yes sir,” he said. “We’ve sent a dropship to your location. Are General Skywalker and Commander Tano with you?”
“Yes,” he said, sparing a glance for Ahsoka and Anakin’s sleeping forms. “They’re here.”
“Very good, sir,” Cody said. “The dropship should be arriving soon.”
“Thank you, Cody,” Obi-Wan said. He watched as Anakin’s brow twitched, and Ahsoka’s nose wrinkled. He smiled. “I look forward to the rendezvous.”