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They’re retreating—they always seem to be retreating, these days, battle-worn and dust-weary, bruised souls carrying on with the weight of the dead bowing their backs. He can’t even name the planet they’re on, the latest in a long, unending march of losses that stretch all the way back to Geonosis.
Obi-Wan counts the men in the LAAT with his eyes, mentally reviewing everyone he knows is still alive, calculating losses, realizing too late there was one face missing -
“ Ahsoka!”
He turns at Anakin’s scream to see Ahsoka, falling from the edge of the ship, just short of her Master’s outstretched hand. Time slows; his heart skips a beat.
There were moments, when Obi-Wan was a padawan, which Qui-Gon would describe as reckless impulses of sheer stupidity in the dressing down that followed. It was a rare occasion indeed when Qui-Gon could accuse him of not thinking. However, when such an occurrence did happen, they were often warranted. The times when Obi-Wan stops thinking are usually out of desperation and, therefore, the karking stupidest decisions he ever makes.
Like now. He doesn’t think. Doesn’t have time to think, because Ahsoka’s dropping farther away and Anakin’s fear is sharp over the bond , and the decision to run the three steps to the threshold and jump is made before his mind can catch up.
Ah, Obi-Wan thinks as the wind whistles in his ears, Not good.
A definite misuse of the Force lets him crash into Ahsoka in her descent. He holds on for dear life, calling on the Force with everything he’s got to slow them down, praying to live, or at least an instant and painless death. Were Qui-Gon still alive to see his former padawan launch himself out of a moving LAAT/i a good eighty meters in the air, Obi-Wan thinks as they hurtle to the ground, the lecture that followed might have actually killed him.
That is, assuming the fall doesn’t.
By some miracle (or maybe that’s his own power, but he’s not one for assigning credit), the Force slows their descent enough not to kill them on impact. A split-second before they hit planetside, Obi-Wan realizes Ahsoka’s going to crash straight into the ground, with his added weight right on top of her, and she could be injured, she could die, and so a hair-pin roll to flip their positions. He feels the air rush out of his lungs as they collide, hears the sickening crack as his head hits dirt, and knows no more.
Waking up is a nightmare . Coming back into consciousness isn’t supposed to be agonizing in and of itself, yet somehow the act of slitting open his eyes is complete torture. Taking a deep breath to clear it sends sharp pain lancing up his spine and dark spots blinking in his vision, so he quickly nixes that idea.
Ahsoka swims in his vision, briefly splitting into two blurry Togruta before joining into his sole padawan.
“- aster! Master! Can you hear me?”
Ow.
“ Loud,” Obi-Wan grunts as the echo of her voice vibrates in his skull. “What...happened?”
His eyes flutter as he attempts to push himself upright; a hand on his shoulder gently persuades him back down. Ahsoka gives him a look that’s all guilt, embarrassment, and too-fresh panic rolled into one. At least he knows she’s learned something from Anakin.
“I came up short on the evac. You jumped after me, and we had a pretty rough landing. Not as rough as it would have been, though. Gotta admit, it was kind of impressive.”
Jumped? Oh. Oh. Yes, now he remember s the freefall, the terror, begging every deity in his vocabulary to slow them down, air as frictionless as water slipping through his fingers as he fought the Force for something to hold onto. Crashing, which explain s how perfectly awful he feels .
Cody is never going to let him live this down.
“I...see. So where...exactly are we...now?” Stang, even gathering the mental cohesion to string together a sentence takes more effort than he’d like. He’s probably concussed; maybe a broken rib or two. Definitely a cracked one. Anakin is going to be insufferable when they get back to the ship, hounding him all the way down to the medbay no doubt.
Fierfek. Speaking of, Anakin must be driving himself spare right about now. He can just see his former padawan commanding rescue teams down to the surface to search for them. The boy is so terribly attached - although, watching the girl he’d jumped from an airborne ship to save chew her lip as she mulls over his question, Obi-Wan considers the possibility of his own hypocrisy.
“My guess is about five kliks east of the LZ. Reinforcements left, but I can’t imagine Anakin would’ve let them leave atmo without us,” she says ,with a half grin that slides away as she adds, softer, “The rebels watched us fall. I think they’ll be looking for us.”
“Yes, I don’t doubt that.” Obi-Wan sucks in a shallow breath, grits his teeth, and sits up in one wobbling motion. His head swims, black spots dancing in his vision, and for a terrible moment he thinks he’s about to be sick. Definitely concussed, then. “Have you...attempted to contact Anakin? Or Admiral Yularen?”
Ahsoka’s embarrassed look is back. Obi-Wan is starting to hate what that means will follow.
“I sort of, uh, lost my comlink during descent. And before you ask—you landed on yours.”
She holds out the broken remains of sparking tech with an eyebrow raise that means she’s trying not to laugh, despite that the situation is anything but funny.
“Ah. On our own, then,” Obi-Wan tries for a reassuring smile, which probably scares more than comforts her. “We should get moving.’
“Wait - “ Ahsoka slips under his arm as soon as he pushes to stand, “Should you really be walking, Master? You hit the ground pretty hard. I’d bet my stipend you’re a little concussed, broken ribs, maybe bleeding internally…”
She trails off as the reality of Obi-Wan’s injuries become startlingly apparent.
“I’d be inclined to take that bet, but unfortunately, it looks as though we have no choice.”
He nods to the skyline, where pollen from the tall purple plants dotting the landscape is being shaken into the air as tanks crash into them.
They stumble along as fast as Obi-Wan’s (fractured?) legs will carry them. The headache behind his eyes builds and builds until he thinks his brain might explode. To his chagrin, at one point he needs to lurch away from Ahsoka in order to retch. She gives him space as he gasps for air, wiping his mouth on his sleeve with his nose wrinkled in disgust, before resuming her position under his other arm. They keep walking.
“You shouldn’t have jumped,” Ahsoka bites out. The pollen trails are getting closer; it’s all they can focus on. “I would have been fine.”
Obi-Wan has to take a few gasping breaths before he can respond. “You were - panicking. You couldn’t - have concentrated on - slowing yourself. I was not about to let my – hng - my favorite grandpadawan fall to such an anticlimactic – ah—death.”
His attempt at teasing falls flat. Ahsoka is silent for another klik - berating herself, maybe, or perhaps dealing with the shock of hearing High Councilor Kenobi express some semblance of emotion. Eventually, he hears her murmur, “Thank you.”
He gives her shoulder a weak squeeze. When had this girl come to mean so much to him?
“Now you know where Anakin gets his reckless streak from.”
She snorts. “I don’t think anyone taught him that, Master.”
The rest of the journey is spent in silence. Head and legs and ribs in shattering agony, Obi-Wan reserves the energy speaking would take into placing one foot in front of the other. Ahsoka is too worried to comment on the fact that the Negotiator has grown worryingly quiet.
Time distorts itself; one moment, he’s fallen to the ground, too weak to keep going; the next he’s up again, stumbling along to the sound of battle droids marching ever close; the next, he’s laying on some straw like material in what looks like a barn.
There are two beings with pitchforks pointed at them. Between them and him stands Ahsoka (she can take them, he knows she can take them, but he struggles to get up and help her anyway). Just lifting his head is enough to make him regret that.
Ahsoka sounds like she’s haggling with them. She’s speaking Bocce (and fuck, but when had she learned Bocce?), and though he’s swimming in and out of consciousness, and sentences fragment between his ears and his brain, Obi-Wan thinks he can make out her repeating: My father is injured. Please, help us.
He blacks out again; comes to, and there’s blasterfire. Smoke fills acrid in his lungs. People are yelling, men and droids, and where is Ahsoka, where did she go? but he can’t move his head, his legs won’t cooperate, and kriff if it’s not the scariest thing to know somewhere out there his padawan needs help and he can’t move.
Cool hands rifle in his hair, running methodically over his scalp. A masculine voice murmurs something by his ear—it’s familiar, but it’s too deep to be Ahsoka, who is the only person Obi-Wan can remember knowing at this point, and he needs to protect her, needs to keep her safe, and where - ?
“Commander Tano is safe, General,” the voice says, “You have to rest now. We’re gonna give you a sedative.”
Obi-Wan feels a prick in his arm, and for the second time that day, the world goes unsettlingly black.
When he comes to again, it’s to the low thrum of a ship in hyperspace. The lights have been dimmed (definitely definitely concussed) but he’d recognized the cloying smell of bacta sticking to the walls of a medbay anywhere.
The first thing he sees is Anakin’s crumpled form in a chair by his bed. The second thing he sees is the change in Anakin’s face with the dawning realization that he’s awake, that he’s alright, and that the reason he’s even here is -
“What the kriff were you thinking?” Anakin whispers, because Obi-Wan’s been concussed enough times that he knows Kix will kick him out for yelling, but he’s still livid as all hells. Even so, Obi-Wan realizes through the duracrete filling his head, one of his hands is being squeezed to death by Anakin’s cybernetic one. Terribly attached. Obi-Wan thinks he squeezes back, but the drugs in his system are making everything...floaty.
“Was taking a page out of your book,” he slurs. Kark, is that what he sounds like? Concern overtakes fury; Anakin relaxes the death grip on his hand enough to reach over for the glass of water on the makeshift table next to him. Propped up on pillows, it’s easy to drink when Anakin tips the glass towards his mouth, though a little bit embarrassing.
“Ahsoka?” Obi-Wan asks, voice less rough than before.
“She’s fine.” And then something in him softens, because the scowl drawn tight in his brows relaxes a fraction. His hand releases Obi-Wan’s to brush back a clump of bacta-soaked hair sticking to his forehead. “Thank you for keeping my padawan safe.”
“Our padawan,” Obi-Wan corrects, reflexive, slipping past his filter before he can remember why such an admission is bad. Anakin looks surprised for a moment before his expression turns abso-fucking-luetly delighted. Stang, but he’s not going to hear the end of this.
“Our padawan,” he agrees, just as sleep takes Obi-Wan again.
The next time he wakes, Anakin is gone. In his place, Ahsoka sits, slumped over in the bedside chair, knees bracing her elbows. Her forehead is bandaged, but she looks otherwise unharmed.
“ Master,” Ahsoka breathes, relief evident in her expression. The drugs in his system are doing their part of keeping him still, so the most Obi-Wan can do is stretch his fingers out to her. She takes his hand immediately, but with care, as if afraid this of all things could break him.
“Okay?” he croaks. His memories are...hazy, at best. There’s still an underlying current of concern for her safety, an anxiety he can’t seem to shake.
“ I’m fine, Master. Thanks to you. ”
He shakes his head – ouch, no, nevermind. Once the stars have cleared from his vision, Obi-Wan says, “Thanks to your training.”
“ No.” Ahsoka squeezes his hand, eyes shining, insistent. “Thanks to you. And you got hurt for me.”
She’s grown so much in the past year, but in this moment, Obi-Wan can only see how terribly young she it. She shouldn’t be here, commanding men she knows may die on her orders, throwing herself into danger to atone for the sins of their Order. She should be safe in the Temple instead of fighting a war her utreekov grandmaster, however unintentionally, helped to start.
No. The Council may send them all over the galaxy, into the wastelands of backwater worlds, on a direct collision course with droid armies and Sith acolytes. Such was their duty as defenders of peace, and as such, there was always the risk of injury or death. But Obi-Wan was never going to let anything happen to this girl when he was in a position to prevent it . Just as he would have done for Anakin; for Cody; for any number of Ghost Company, for that matter. After all, what’s a handful more in a laundry list of unapproved attachments he’s made over the years?
Obi-Wan clears his throat . “ I told you. Favorite grandpadawan and all that. And you can hardly expect me to deal with Anakin alone now that we’ve gotten a rhythm going. ”
It’s not clear whether Ahsoka understands his attempted teasing— what it’s standing in for— but it’s all he can do. He can’t be upfront with her; can’t possibly express what she means to him, can’t tell her how dearly he loves her. How much he worries when she and Anakin are sent off on some dangerous assignment without him. How Cody refers to both of them as his ad’ike; how he privately considers her just as much his apprentice as Anakin’s.
Instead, Obi-Wan gives her hand one last squeeze and recommends she get some rest herself. Cody or Anakin will be in to check on him soon, he’s sure, and they should all make use of this rare moment of downtime while they have it. Ahsoka hesitates, but again, she’s only young. The stress of their misadventure weighs her down enough to agree to a nap with but a yawn to argue. Obi-Wan watches her leave, noting with pride how much taller she is in the doorway than the little scrap of an initiate they’d met at Christophsis. He sighs in the empty medbay.
“ Believe me. I know how stupid that was,” Obi-Wan murmurs to no one, although if he privately hopes the words make their way to whatever plane of existence awaits them all – well, that’s between him and the Force. “But if you’d only met her, you would have jumped after her too, Master. Ahsoka would have had you wrapped around her little finger within a month .”
As he drifts off, Obi-Wan swears he feels the impression of a hand on his forehead, and a deep, teasing voice murmuring, Takes one to know one, padawan mine. He puts the hallucination down to the pain meds, and falls asleep smiling.