Chapter Text
From questionable Intel scraped together from bounty hunters to outright absurd stories peddled by scouts and spies, Anakin tracked every lead, no matter how implausible. He'd accessed classified war documents with Padmé’s help, skirting the edge of legality and stepping into an ethical gray zone even he found hard to justify. But nothing was too small, too unreliable, or too far-fetched. Not satellite scans. Not intercepted transmissions. Not even the muttered rumors from those who had more reason to lie than to be loyal. Anakin had followed Kenobi’s trail like a bloodhound. He was driven, obsessive, and unwilling to stop until he had him cornered.
And the more the trail stretched on, the more time Anakin had to sit with silence and second-guessing, the more old wounds rose to the surface.
He'd given everything to the Order. His loyalty. His faith. His Padawan.
Sometimes, in the quiet moments between his obsessive bouts of tracking Darth Vesper, Anakin thought about Ahsoka. About how easily the Council had cast her aside with no apology or admission of guilt. Only silence and a half-baked excuse of how the betrayal would make her a better Jedi. More useful to them.
She had trusted them. He had trusted them. And in the end, trust hadn't been enough.
Maybe that was why this hunt felt so urgent, why he couldn't let it go. If he brought Kenobi in, if he succeeded where the Council had fai— struggled, maybe then they'd see him the way he had always wanted them to since his first day standing before them at nine years old. Not as reckless or unstable or too attached.
Just right.
Just enough.
Needed.
Wanted.
And yet Anakin could find no satisfaction in the trail he followed. He kept wanting more. He had more questions, and Kenobi really did seem to move like a ghost.
“The Separatists deny he's real, which is how you know he is,” Padmé’s voice echoed.
He had traversed the sweltering, tangled jungles of Felucia and then labored through the shadowed alleyways of Coruscant’s undercity. Then his desert-accustomed skin had to experience the frostbitten cliffs of Carlac and the crumbling, sun-bleached ruins on Ryloth. Anakin had dreamed of traveling the galaxy as a child but not in such dystopian circumstances. He seemed to uncover more and more layers to the chase, and when Anakin reached into the Force to ascertain Kenobi’s whereabouts, when he focused his energy onto the thin golden string stretching from himself to Kenobi, for a ghost of a second he could almost feel a wave of amusement radiating from the Sith who had quickly become the bane of his existence.
His latest lead, if he could call it that, had come from a backwater comms tech on Vulpter, who claimed someone matching Kenobi’s profile had walked a passage through a shielded port three days ago. It could've been a trap. Anakin didn't care.
He landed by nightfall, left his ship cloaked in the hills, and moved fast through the industrial outskirts, his Jedi robes pulled high to conceal his identity. The city stank of scorched metal lovingly garnished with the scent of motor oil, but beneath it, he felt the pulse of the Force willing him through the maze of the planet, guiding him.
For the first time in weeks, Anakin didn't need a datapad filled with military jargon to tell him what to do. He knew.
He could sense Kenobi more strongly than he could feel his own heartbeat hammering beneath his ribs.
He moved silently, boots kicking dust as he followed the Force’s map through the gutted corridors of what had once been a refinery. His senses were higher and sharper than ever. His lightsaber was clipped to his belt. His jaw was tight. His pulse was steady. Mostly.
This wasn't just another ill-fated chase through unstable terrain. This was the moment.
Anakin had no intention of losing him again.
His breath hitched.
He was close.
The refinery's skeletal halls stretched before him in rusted silence, moonlight slanting through broken beams.
As Anakin approached, he saw a dark figure in the shadows. His hand hovered near his lightsaber, but he didn't draw it.
Not yet.
Not when he realized the figure was facing away from him.
Anakin halted. Two could play this game.
He waited.
Seconds felt like hours, but he endured.
“Anakin, love, I can feel your heartbeat from here. Do you always get this worked up when you see me?”
Love. That was a new one.
He didn't respond. Instead, he steadied himself, adjusting his feet to be shoulder-width apart. This time, Anakin promised silently, I’ll have the high ground or die trying, even if I have to turn this planet upside-down. Then, he swallowed the lump in his throat and forced himself to speak first.
“I'm not the one who's been hiding in the shadows, Vesper.”
A low chuckle finally drifted from the darkness before Kenobi finally turned, a slow, sly smile curling on his unfairly-perfect lips.
“Oh, dear one, ‘hiding?’ I was just letting you feel like you had a chance.”
“Right,” Anakin said carefully. “By leading me through a wild bantha chase across the galaxy.”
Kenobi tilted his head.
“And such a valiant chase it was. On Carlac? You looked freezing, dear. I did consider wrapping you in a blanket. Or my arms. Care to guess which I preferred?”
Anakin scoffed. Kenobi’s gaze drifted lazily up, eyes catching on the edge of Anakin’s hood. The smile on his face widened, like he’d just remembered an inside joke.
“Now, what have I said about the hood?”
Anakin blinked.
“Come now, don’t be coy,” Kenobi continued. “I told you last time. If you have to insist on getting prettier by the minute, the least you could do is let me look at you properly.”
Anakin paused. That was… unexpected.
Kriff, these games of his. Always getting under his skin.
“Do you think this is funny?” Anakin snapped, but the words came out thinner than intended, his frustration laced with something far more brittle. “You think this is all a joke?”
The second the retorts left his mouth, regret surged behind them. Keep your composure, he’d told himself. Be calm. Be in control. But that had never been his strength.
Emotion clouded his mind. It always had. No matter how many battles he won or how many lives he saved, it was never enough. He could almost hear the Council’s silent verdict echoing across the stars.
"Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is," Yoda had once said, peering at him with those ageless, unblinking eyes. "Control yourself, Skywalker. Or be controlled, you will."
And now, here he was, standing in front of Obi-Wan Kenobi—Darth Vesper, enemy of the Republic—and still, still, he couldn’t keep a grip on the part of himself that always unraveled at the worst possible moment.
Kenobi tilted his head, and for a breath, he looked almost thoughtful, and Anakin thought he had finally struck a nerve.
But then that maddening smile crept back onto his face.
“Love,” he said, voice drenched in mock offense, “I would never joke about you. Not when you look like that.”
He gestured vaguely, as though Anakin’s whole existence was too much to take in with a single point.
“Really, it’s cruel, showing up to confront me with your cloak all dramatic and your jaw clenched like that. How is anyone supposed to focus?”
Anakin stared at him, dumbfounded. “Are you serious right now?”
Kenobi arched a brow. Anakin realized suddenly that they'd been standing for what felt like hours trading barbs instead of saber strikes.
“Darling, I’ve been serious. You’re just alarmingly slow on the uptake. Makes me wonder what the Jedi are teaching you.”
And there it was.
Anakin sobered. “You're under arrest, Darth Vesper.”
“Oh, I am, am I?”
“You're a traitor,” Anakin hissed. “A murderer. A Sith.”
Kenobi stepped closer, the faintest glint of amusement still flickering in his eyes.
“Traitor, murderer, Sith. Such heavy titles. But you sound like you've rehearsed that speech.”
“Among other things,” Anakin threatened, deliberately gripping his lightsaber.
The briefest wave of surprise rippled through the Force before settling into nothingness, and Anakin pressed his lips into a thin line to prevent the cocky smile that threatened to breach them.
“Hmm,” Kenobi mused, a slow, calculating smile curling at the edge of his lips.
“So tell me, love, do you believe it? Or is this your way of convincing yourself you're doing the right thing?”
“I don't need to convince myself. You betrayed everything you stood for,” Anakin said, his voice quieter than he meant it to be.
Kenobi’s expression flickered for the briefest moment.
“No, sweetheart. I just stopped pretending it was worth standing for.”
Anakin didn't have a response to that. So he ignited his saber, unsure if he were doing so to finally capture Kenobi or so the buzz could fill the silence.
Kenobi shifted with a fluid grace, igniting his own.
Blades clashed in a blur of blue and red, sparks dancing through the stale air of the ruined refinery. Each of Anakin’s strikes were met with an effortless parry, and each advance was met with a calculated retreat. Kenobi moved elegantly, not unlike Dooku, but Anakin felt a jerk in the Force. A warning. Something was off tonight. Different. His eyes narrowed, assessing, calculating.
He spun to deflect an attack, flicking an abandoned barrel toward Kenobi with his mind to buy some time. Kenobi didn't fall victim to the distraction long enough for Anakin to do real damage, but it bought him half a second to put his finger on what was triggering the alarm bells in his mind.
There was a faint ease in Kenobi’s stance, a subtle slackening in his defense. If he’d blinked, he would've missed it.
Anakin pressed forward, determined to end this quickly. He feinted left, then swept low, only to catch a glimpse of something unexpected. As Kenobi blocked the strike, his eyes flickered—just for a heartbeat—with something like regret, or resignation.
The parry came just a fraction too late.
Anakin’s blade grazed Obi-Wan’s arm, a shallow cut drawing a thin line of blood.
Kenobi didn’t flinch. His eyes dipped briefly to the wound, then returned to Anakin's face with that same unreadable calm.
“Well done,” he murmured. “You're getting faster.”
Anakin froze for a moment, his heart pounding.
Was this a mistake?
Or a choice?
And why did something resembling guilt, no, horror flare in Anakin’s chest the moment his saber met Kenobi’s skin?
“You’re holding back,” he said before he could stop himself.
Kenobi tilted his head, expression inscrutable. “Am I?”
“You could’ve blocked that.”
A beat passed. A breath. Maybe more than one. The hum of their sabers between them was the only distinguishable sound, and they cast flickers of light over Kenobi’s face.
“I suppose I could have,” he said softly.
“What are you doing?”
Kenobi smiled faintly, the corners of his mouth twitching like he knew exactly how much chaos he was causing.
“What do you think I'm doing?”
Before Anakin could respond, Kenobi’s saber lifted—
But too late.
In three swift motions—disarm, trip, pin—it was over. The red saber clattered to the floor. Kenobi hit the duracrete hard, breath leaving him in a quiet grunt. Anakin had him pinned before he could rise again, cuffs already in hand.
Kenobi, breathless but grinning, looked up at him from the ground.
“In my fantasy,” he said, lightly, “I'm the one doing the pinning.”
Anakin flushed, jaw tightening into a scowl as he snapped the cuffs into place.
“Shut up. You’re under arrest.”
“So serious.” But Kenobi didn't resist.
Just before Anakin could haul him up, Kenobi tilted his head, gaze steady. He leaned in, breath warm.
“Did you get what you wanted?” Kenobi murmured.
Anakin’s grip faltered. His breath hitched.
He had. Hadn’t he?
Anakin didn't answer. He was too busy wondering why it didn't feel like enough.