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Before Anakin charged directly into battle alone against Obi-Wan’s instructions (as he had done many times before), Obi-Wan touched his forearm. It was not the first time this happened; that had been when Anakin was twelve and their next point of training was movement.
“Movement?” Anakin’s brows furrowed. “I know how to walk.”
“Of course you do,” Obi-Wan replied, unbothered, for he had learned to expect such slight snippiness from his padawan. “But this is not just walking. Can you jump at the right time to avoid a blaster shot, roll over an object, and start running?” He called a training saber to his hand with the Force and gestured widely at the space before them. “With a saber? Against a group of enemies? Protecting an innocent or working with another Jedi?”
Anakin looked very displeased; Obi-Wan could not help his amusement.
Despite his initial gripes, Anakin performed well without excessive instruction. Each action slid into the next. Nothing existed separately; the jump was part of the roll was part of the run was part of the skid-to-a-stop. Even with a training saber, he never sliced himself, only orbited around the object and continued. Obi-Wan threw balled-up cloth at him, used the Force to unbalance his stance, pretended to be an elderly woman who needed cover from danger, and Anakin merely ebbed and flowed like water.
But practice alone differed greatly from group practice, so Obi-Wan planned a training session for their padawans with Master Plo Koon.
“Isn’t Bultar nine?” Anakin asked.
“Nine years old?” Obi-Wan glanced up from his plate, and Anakin’s expression betrayed a certain distaste or perhaps frustration not uncommon for him. “I believe so. She’s around there, in any case. Why?”
Silence lingered, and Anakin turned away, stabbing at the scrambled eggs in front of him. “Nothing.”
Obi-Wan lifted an eyebrow. “I know you prefer to train with padawans your age,” he said, “but given that you’re supposed to learn together and from each other, I cannot pair you with someone experienced with movement.”
Anakin did not answer. The refectory whirred, as lively as ever, around them; bits and pieces of conversations floated past, accompanied by the smell of warm food and the clinking of utensils against plates and ice against glasses. Sunlight clawed toward the duo, bubbled in their dead air, from the wide transparisteel windows, golden, pure, shining.
Obi-Wan reached across the table to place his hand on Anakin’s, and his padawan startled but halted the movement in an instant, as though he had encased himself in stone. “Anakin, I would not put you in any situation I knew you could not handle.” Obi-Wan tilted his head slightly. “You know that, yes?”
Anakin very obviously tried to relax the tension in his jaw, his shoulders, creeping and settling into the cracks in his expression. “Yes, Master.”
Obi-Wan gave him a light smile, though privately he wished Anakin had not agreed at all if he did not believe it. His own failure—to prove to his padawan that he believed in his ability to improve and maintain himself—would have battered him like a blaster bolt, but at least then Obi-Wan would have known it was a problem, injured as he may have been. Now, he could only search Anakin’s face and look silently at the emerging bond between them, not certain if probing would ruin the leaves blooming into multicolored flowers.
“Good, then,” Obi-Wan responded, no longer hungry for the muffin and tea in front of him.
The session began well, by all accounts. Both apprentices had a very obvious desire to outdo their counterpart, which made for amusing but useful back-and-forths (for the key part was not besting one’s opponent but learning and honing one’s own skills, which, no doubt, was more difficult to impart). Halfway through the session, Plo Koon suggested a mock duel with lightsabers, if only to capitalize on the bubbling competition rather than let it fester and turn to envy. Each padawan would work with their respective master against the other pair, and whoever won got bragging rights.
Back-to-back, Obi-Wan and Anakin struck out and then danced forward, up and around whatever happened to be in the way. Satisfaction spiked through Obi-Wan at each hit of sabers, and his legs and arms ached pleasantly. Training balanced oneself just as well as meditation, and though he preferred the latter, the former wasn’t so bad when he had a skilled partner to work with.
Bultar cut down with her saber, and Obi-Wan jerked backward, kicking a stray box forward to create space. To his left, he noticed Plo Koon holding his lightsaber up, creating a gap near his torso. Beside him, Anakin tensed.
Obi-Wan glanced at him, noting the shift in energy, and cast his eyes back to their enemy, spying the opportunity just as Anakin lowered himself, preparing to leap. Obi-Wan touched his forearm—a warning, a be careful, a don’t go too far, but still gentle by all means. I’m here. We’re in this together.
And Anakin halted abruptly, turned to look at him, something inscrutable in his blue gaze, like a nuna caught under blaster fire of a hunter. “Master?”
Whatever he’d been expecting hadn’t been that. “Just reminding you I’m here,” he said, withdrawing his hand and hoping the naked surprise had not shown on his face, “we’re working as a pair, no?”
The sheen in his eyes dissipated, dew under sun, as if it had never been there in the first place. “Right.” Anakin nodded, attention flitting to Plo Koon and Bultar, who had assumed their stance side-by-side, sabers held out protectively, defensively, in front of them.
Anakin brandished his saber, sliding back to Obi-Wan’s side, and the world seemed to right itself, settling on its axis. Obi-Wan cast a thankful glance at Plo Koon, then slunk forward to steal an extra hit.
There was no return this time, not in the dingy cave with all its bizarre accoutrement overhead. Obi-Wan’s hand grasped at empty air when Anakin streaked toward Dooku, and then the only sound was Obi-Wan shouting and the crackle of Force lightning.
—
Anakin sensed the lightning before it happened—a spasm of uncontrolled energy, spiking through the air toward him—but could not escape its scorching touch. Dooku’s fingers flexed, and wind rushed around Anakin before a ragged wall of stone met his back. Gasping, he folded forward, body searing and searching for relief when none arrived. His mind withdrew into itself, finding similar instances of violent pain, and handed the memories to him on a platter slick with blood.
It had happened a few times. There had been instances with Watto and the end of an iron, but that had been a different sort of torture, something concentrated and intense. This radiated, spread, and Gardulla preferred that sort of retribution. She favored the shock-stick (as the slaves called it; Anakin had no idea if it had a different title) over anything else, said it helped teach people to listen, to submit, to understand their errors. Anakin never caused problems for his master, but that did not mean he escaped her wrath.
The punishment remained as blurry as dirty transparisteel, each instance mixing like watery paint into the time before and after it. He had been very young for most of his time with Gardulla, which meant that age had daubed the events into emotions and sensations for the most part. But this one differed, crystallized, came into form and jumped from the platter into the black space of his senses, frazzled from the lightning.
“This’ll be cold, Ani,” someone—his mother—said. Warm, damp hands moved overhead, smearing a sticky and cool substance onto the indelible heat of the injury scattered across his back and arms. “But it’ll help you feel better.”
The air hung arid and dusty all around him, tinged by poonten grass, blood, and cooking meat somewhere in the distance. Even when he opened his eyes, he found a brown blur, and he realized distantly he was laying facedown like an exhausted animal, ready to die. He didn’t like that thought very much.
When he tried to turn himself over, because he was not an animal surrendering to death, the hands moved again, and his mother murmured something comforting though inaudible. Then, her arms surrounded him as the brown blur inched further away, and he leaned into her as she pulled him to her chest. She smelled of blood and sweat but that cool substance, too, and Anakin laid his chin on her shoulder.
Though he could not see her face, he did not have to—it was still his mother, the warm hands, the sleek brown hair tugged into a single ponytail, the pale scratchy shirt and the gentle touch. Perhaps she was smiling, too, that slight thing that turned the corners of her mouth upward and scrunched the skin around her eyes, because they were together, and it was not always possible to be as such. But she tried hard to make that be true, even if it hurt her. She was a good mother, that way.
Not just that way. She gave him her rations of water and food if they didn’t have enough; she worked on extra hats and gloves to protect him from sunburn; she told stories and lilted songs if he could not sleep; she grabbed stray scrap and gifted it to him despite any value she might’ve exchanged it for.
“It’s the inside of a wortwood tree,” she explained, but the smells seemed farther away, and her arms did not grasp as tightly as they had moments prior. Still, her voice sounded amidst his muddied senses. “If you boil and crush it, it helps burns heal faster.”
Anakin nodded against her, and she hummed gently, rocking backward, forward, like a boat or a speeder not yet balanced, but still supportive, firm, unwilling to endanger its passenger. That was what his mother did, no matter the circumstance that surrounded them (perhaps specifically because of the circumstance that surrounded them). She was the boat on which he stood and observed the world, the speeder that allowed him to rush by the competition, those other little girls and boys who didn’t know how to link an ion beam to forward turbines.
“Master Kenobi,” Dooku drawled, and the memory fuzzed at the edges. No, he thought, as though his mother would stay just because he had stated his disapproval. “You disappoint me.” The grilling meat outside their cocoon of safety evaporated, replaced by searing skin beneath him. “Yoda holds you in such high esteem.”
No one said anything. The sound of sabers hitting each other filled the space, an incessant airy clang mixed with shuffling clothing and feet, subsuming faint chatter and wind. Stone dug into Anakin’s back, and the last vestiges of the Force lightning tingled in his hands, larger than his mother had ever seen them.
“Surely you can do better.”
—
Maybe Obi-Wan’s attention wandered. Maybe he considered Anakin, whose suffering beaconed in the Force, for too long. How could he not? Anakin knew shielding—the crèchemasters had to teach him immediately after he arrived on Coruscant—but given the magnitude of Force lightning, he likely did not have the energy to protect his agony from leaking into the Force, prodding at Obi-Wan. His padawan’s pain was his pain, too, flowing through their bond, just like his pride and strength and warmth.
Or maybe the red-against-blue of lightsabers had pulled focus away from him in a crucial moment. Obi-Wan had dueled with his saber before, of course. He did not worry about losing, only relied on the Soresu economy of motion he had studied since his master’s death, the eternal blade movement, smoothing into the next, the next, the next, though many years of practice had never led him to fight a fallen Jedi, strayed from the teachings. Every strike had the power of a great luminescence and his strength behind it. Still, a ravenous and demanding darkness bit at the light, trying to chase it away in the seconds that they met.
Perhaps he simply made a mistake. An error.
Perhaps he failed.
Pain spiked through Obi-Wan’s shoulder, stinging and scorching, and despite his efforts, he fell to one knee with a cry. The char flamed a second time across his thigh, and only when he glanced at his arm did he realize what it was: a lightsaber wound.
He had never been struck before, not once. Not in training with Quinlan, behind their masters’ backs, because they had not yet been cleared to use their sabers in practice but they just had to know. Not in his duel with Maul, after—
Qui-Gon. Helpfully, his mind supplied that ruinous circle with its orange, fiery edges encroaching on flesh, and the memory laid itself out as it had many times before.
Obi-Wan held Qui-Gon as if they had never quarreled, never clashed in every possible way, and yet he found no words despite the questions that crowded him. Did it hurt (yes, he knew now it hurt like the heat of many hundreds of suns directed to one tiny spot), could he do anything (no, though he knew that then and wanted desperately not to believe it), did he know that Obi-Wan despised himself for getting trapped between the electron gates and leaving Qui-Gon to duel Maul alone (he still could not guess at an answer)?
“Promise me you’ll train the boy,” Qui-Gon managed, and briefly Obi-Wan could not believe his ears. Why spend his final breaths on Anakin?What about him(in a way, it was about him, given how quickly and irreversibly their lives had intertwined)? What did Anakin have to do with anything (nearly everything, now)? He could not train a padawan, not without Qui-Gon to lean on. Other Jedi could help, certainly, but childishly, he did not want other Jedi to offer their assistance, to duck in during training. He wanted Qui-Gon.
Still, was he to deny Qui-Gon’s request (no, never)? The light in his eyes dimmed by the moment, so Obi-Wan promised, throat tightening when Qui-Gon’s hand came to rest aside his face. Obi-Wan covered Qui-Gon’s palm with his own, memorizing the warmth beneath his rough skin. His Master’s sweat-damp hair fell backward when Obi-Wan shifted to hold him closer, and the Force adjusted itself around them, sensing that something planned to join it. No.
Then the world shifted, and he was on his back. Obi-Wan sucked a deep breath in, and it entered fluttering, several birds of oxygen flapping their wings rapidly in his lungs. It hurt. A lot did, actually, rushing over him in an endless wave. Was he dying? Where was Anakin?
Anakin.
When his gaze wandered up, which felt less like glancing somewhere and more like lugging chunks of stone and ice uphill, he found Anakin, hands hovering over his midsection. Anakin. Obi-Wan wanted to talk to him, to ask if he had forgiven Obi-Wan for their occasional clash, for any time his discipline felt like undue punishment.
Anakin stood. He looked too tall, face too long and churlish, but still he lingered, observing, watching. Obi-Wan struggled to push himself to his good knee, and Anakin lifted a foot and stepped hard on his ankle.
No, Anakin would not do that—it was Dooku. The memory dissipated, in a rush of color and potent shame (for how had he allowed himself to think Dooku was Anakin, how had he become someone who he was not?), and in its place the pain sharpened all over again in his thigh and shoulder and now, of course, in his ankle, where the bones shuffled to account for the heeled boot demanding room. Infinite white hallways and ceilings faded, and the gloom of the cavernous room filled the gaps. Panic trickled through his limbs, slow like honey. He could not defend himself, not with his useless ankle and wounds, unless he found his saber, the wretched thing, when had it gotten away from him?
Time ran thin, though, and the world tilted again as Dooku kicked at his good knee. Obi-Wan gritted his teeth, swinging his gaze around and catching on the red lightsaber poised overhead. No. Was this how Qui-Gon had felt, life leaking slowly from his torso, unable to assist in a fight which mattered not only to master and apprentice but to the safety of the Jedi Order? When Obi-Wan called on the Force, tried to peel apart its many layers for help, it only shuddered as if anticipating something.
Surely it would not mock him by waiting for his demise and telling him that it was doing so. The Force shifted backward, lying in wait. Dooku swung his saber in an arc.
Do something!
A swirl of fire surged from the hesitance of the Force, someone shouted, and Anakin (thereal Anakin) appeared, blocking the incoming blow with his saber. Outlined in indistinct indigo, Anakin pushed Dooku away, and through a wave of relief, Obi-Wan leaned back into the pleats of the Force. His combined injuries panged, a continual clock ringing on the hour, and frustration prickled in his chest. Obi-Wan had guessed it earlier but knew for certain he could not help in battle, not with his sprained, fractured, broken—whatever it was—ankle and an unsteady gait, when dueling relied on the stability and speed of its user. Still, he needed his saber, even if it would not rest in his hands.
“Brave of you, boy,” Dooku said, the edges of his mouth twitching in amusement. “But I would’ve thought you learned your lesson.”
The hilt called to Obi-Wan, resting unattended on the floor no more than five meters away. When he tried to summon it, it only writhed like a duraslug chopped in half, so he shut his eyes, imagined the tiny kyber crystal in the weapon, who asked for nothing in exchange for the protection it provided, glowing, warm. Not a second later, it flew toward his palm and settled comfortably in the curve it had been created to idle in. A swift glance up revealed Anakin laser-focused on Dooku (as he should have been), eyes narrowed, saber lifted.
“I am a slow learner,” Anakin responded flatly.
“Anakin!” He shouted, and as Anakin’s head turned, Obi-Wan tossed his saber. Anakin’s hand shot out to catch it—a second home through connection alone. Then, with practiced precision and honed strength, Anakin twirled both sabers and struck at Dooku, and the duel continued, a wheel of moves repeating itself, waiting for a slip up or moment of unparalleled vigor.
—
Anakin fought fiercely and with no hesitation; the Force lightning still crackled through him, a storm yet to depart, but it would not stop him from defeating Dooku (and defending Obi-Wan). He would win this battle—he saw it in his head, felt it in the air as his saber grated once more against Dooku’s. He pulled back, breathing hard. Obi-Wan should’ve taken that hit. Having his sparring partner would have helped, certainly, but there was no choice but to win without him. At least Anakin did not need Obi-Wan’s assistance as he once had.
When Anakin was young, perhaps thirteen, he and Obi-Wan traveled to Ilum for the second time. A few younger padawans wanted to go with their Masters to see if their crystals called out to them, and Obi-Wan determined that the expedition required their protection. The last trip, apparently, had been interrupted by local fauna, who bit and snarled at the Jedi roaming around the caves for kyber crystals.
“What are we looking for again?” Anakin asked, wrapping his arms around himself, struggling against the heavy coat Obi-Wan had suggested he wear (because one wouldn’t do). Still, icy wind seemed to cut right through its thick fur, sinking into his bones and chilling his soul.
“Nothing in particular,” Obi-Wan responded, using a gloved hand to shield his eyes from the brilliance of sunshine on infinite snow. “Our assignment is to protect the mouth of the cave.”
Anakin glanced back at him, eyebrows lifting. “So we’re just supposed to sit here?”
“You may scout around, if you’d prefer.”
Anakin brushed invisible snow off his pants, already taking several steps away. If he had to wait until all the padawans were done, he’d freeze, and that wasn’t really in his plans for the day.
“Call me if you see anything,” Obi-Wan advised, leaning against the deep blue-gray slate of the cave’s entrance.
“I will,” he said over his shoulder.
Unfortunately, he discovered little of interest. Snow rose into rolling white hills, occasionally spiking into rocky outcroppings, sometimes lowering into frozen ice lakes, but he observed most of this from a distance, unable to get closer without venturing too far from the caves. Overhead, the sun dazzled but did not provide much warmth. It simply rested there, alert despite its pale and weak state in the seemingly endless winter of Ilum. Nothing like Tatooine.
Sighing, he turned around, crossing his arms to resist the inevitable and intense urge to shiver. Why was this what Obi-Wan had picked for training? What were they even training? Patience? It’s not working very well, he thought crossly. If he was lucky, the padawans would be done when he returned; if not, he was due for a lot more sitting around.
He’d stopped briefly by the entrance of a cave that looked similar to the one they’d been guarding, only this one had no padawans inside, prying for kyber that probably did not want them. It was empty.
Or so he thought, shortly before something shifted behind him, and a lumbering weight forced him to the ground.
The wind went out of his chest, and alarm rose rapidly in its place (and though it was warm he could not be thankful for it). Hot breath ghosted his ear, and claws dug into his coats a moment later. He cursed, kicking at the belly of the beast. Surprised, it reared backward, and he scrambled away, unclipping his saber.
The creature—creatures, because two of them rose before him—snarled, deep and loveless. They seemed reptilian save for their dense dark fur and the two hind legs on which they towered, swiping forward with their arms to catch him by the side of his head. Anakin ducked, heart thumping in his chest. What was that thing?
No matter. He could handle it.
Anakin wanted to focus on one, but the creatures refused to work out of sync with one another. When one withdrew, another lunged for him and swept its tail beneath his legs.
He fell face-first, because of course he did, and claws grasped his frame, yanking up. Thrashing, he stabbed his saber toward the creature’s chest, but it found no purchase, only scraped against empty air. Shit. Anakin sucked a deep breath into his lungs, trying to quell the dread roiling in his stomach.
The sound of a lightsaber igniting startled him but did not deter the creatures from scratching at his torso. Anakin gritted his teeth, moving his hands beneath the claws to try to push up against them, but found he did not need to. A bright blue saber whirred close to his head, blocked another attack, and the ground met his back again.
Dizzy, Anakin tried to stand but fell to one knee; through his bleariness, he spied a man in a brown cloak and a far heavier russet coat cutting the arms off the creatures. His saber moved with grace and speed, spearing one through the chest and withdrawing swiftly to dislodge its body from his saber. Hardly a minute passed before realization knocked Anakin in the head like a rock: Obi-Wan.
His master ducked to avoid a light-headed swipe from the beast and swung himself under its legs, scoring his saber up its back in a flash of light. Even before it hit the ground, Obi-Wan slid across the ice-snow toward Anakin, extending his hand with his eyes scanning Anakin’s frame.
Anakin took his hand. “Thank you,” he managed, struggling to dislodge the shock on his face.
How did he know?
“I felt danger in the Force,” Obi-Wan explained later, when neither of them hung two moments away from being torn open by a gorgodon, as Anakin had learned they were called.
“And you knew it was me?”
“Of course,” Obi-Wan answered, setting his cup of tea down and meeting Anakin’s eyes. “You are like a fire, in the Force, always burning. When you are injured, or afraid, you burn brighter.” He smiled. “Not hard to find.”
Dooku swung his saber in a wide arc, and the second saber that typically rose to greet such an attack did not appear. Instead, it cleaved toward Anakin, and he tried to defend himself by whipping both arms upward, aiming at Dooku’s shoulders.
Then, a flash of white pain consumed Anakin’s hand, and the world tilted rapidly as Dooku threw him through the air again. Before he hit the ground, everything narrowed to a single point—his abandoned hand on the floor, ringed in still-hot orange—and went abruptly black.
—
Obi-Wan watched the fight between bouts of searching the Force for another soul who knew of their predicament. Both taxed him: the former felt like an incessant check on his ability to train Anakin, and the latter relied on energy he did not have much of. Still, he tried to keep his consciousness sharp despite the pain of the wounds. Passing out would not help his padawan.
It did not seem anything could.
One moment, the encounter continued, and the next, Anakin landed in a heap near Obi-Wan’s legs, missing a hand.
Cool panic pulsed through Obi-Wan, and he propped himself up on a single elbow, reaching for the pulse point at Anakin’s neck. The skin was warm, sweaty from the battle, but below his fingers a pulse drummed along—Anakin had only passed out, no doubt from the pain. Obi-Wan pulled him closer, not wanting his head to rest on the floor, cold and uncaring. At least Obi-Wan’s legs carried the warmth of someone who wanted him better, healed, safe. He lifted a hand to brush Anakin’s hair back from where it plastered to his forehead, but a memory struck him and froze him there in place.
Not long after they took Anakin to Coruscant, he fell ill. It should not have been overly surprising, given that Anakin had never been off planet and thus had never developed resistance to any sort of sicknesses off Tatooine, but the swiftness with which he improved stunned the Temple’s healers. Coruscanti fever (Vendaxian had been eliminated from even the lower levels of Coruscant by a vaccine systematically distributed across the planet, but it had a less severe descendant which affected citizens of any city-region) typically took about a week to move through any given organism, from the onset of an intense cough to the dregs of an unusually high temperature.
When Anakin got sick, it occurred, strangely, in the span of two days.
One: he coughed incessantly, found his arms and legs weak, and could not carry even a backpack. Obi-Wan accompanied him to the healers, who found him a clean cot and posed the whole thing as a sort of fun involvement in their job, as if Anakin could not handle the fact he was ill (forgetting, evidently, his home planet and the difficulties he had surely faced there).
You could be a healer, too, if you hold the gauze we’ll need for your injection, they said, all smiles, and Anakin refused. I want to be a Jedi. They’ll still let me be a Jedi, right, Obi-Wan?
Two: the fever was bad. He flitted in and out of consciousness all day, too warm, struggling to stay asleep but similarly struggling to stay awake. Obi-Wan did not know what else to do except stay beside him, watching over him, sentinel, as if he could use his saber against the fever. Anakin did not have anyone else to visit him in the Temple —no close friends from when he was in the crèche, no padawans he sparred with frequently. No one except for him. Quinlan came to visit, and Mace observed from the front of the room, but Obi-Wan suspected this was more for him, not the boy, given that his master had just died, but still. It was not as if Obi-Wan wanted to leave.
The fever came in swings of strength, taking pleasure in pivoting between intense heat and cold. When Anakin tried to toss his thin blanket away, Obi-Wan merely tugged it off him, folding it between his hands. When the chill came back, he would regret it, but Obi-Wan would be there to retrieve it and lay it over his form, which seemed so small, now, much smaller and younger than he had seemed on Tatooine. Perhaps it was because he was a Knight and Anakin was his padawan. He had a responsibility, a charge placed upon him by the Council, Qui-Gon, and the Force itself.
Obi-Wan sighed deeply, if only to expel the thoughts along with the breath. He ought to have tried meditation but it seemed far away, as if he’d left it back on Naboo, back with Qui-Gon and Padmé. The constant bustle of the Halls of Healing probably did not make it easy, either.
Though, had Qui-Gon not taught him to be able to connect to himself and the Force anywhere, regardless of the circumstance? The Force was always there, only waiting for one to step into it, to notice it. Perhaps this, again, fell on him, reflected on his failure, his inability, and thus the fact that Anakin should not have been his padawan and instead some other Knight, or Master, even, who had more experience—
Anakin mumbled something unintelligible, turning over again so that his Obi-Wan could see his face. Obi-Wan looked at him, his eyebrows and nose scrunched up in pain, hair stuck to his forehead from sweat.
Obi-Wan inhaled again and reached forward to brush the hair away from his forehead. Perhaps he could not meditate when he should have been able to, perhaps he could not save his master, but this small comfort he could give.
“No,” Anakin mumbled, swiping the hand at his forehead. His fingers were clammy against Obi-Wan’s, and he froze.
“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan said, instinctive, not even sure what he was apologizing for except for the fact that he had done something Anakin did not like, did not want.
Before he could withdraw his hand, Anakin whispered, “Mom?” Curious, searching, he grabbed at the hand against his own, and Obi-Wan’s stomach flipped. This was not right, either.
“No,” Obi-Wan admitted, “I’m…” sorry. What, was he sorry that he was not his mother (that she was so very far away, and he could not take her place, act in her stead, comfort him in the ways that she knew best)? Sorry that his master was only a Knight, had just lost his own master, had no honest idea how to train a padawan, would only have to try his best and hope it would do? He cleared his throat, not without difficulty. “You’ll feel better soon, Anakin. Hang in there.”
Anakin hummed, and Obi-Wan carefully guided their hands down to the side of the bed, not letting go.
So Obi-Wan did not brush Anakin’s hair from his forehead in the dim cavern. It was not his place to do that, to fill that role. But he did not let go, did not let him lay there on the floor alone, kept him instead in Obi-Wan’s sphere, his world, and his hands fluttered to cover the injury where his missing hand was, protective, defensive.
—
Later—
(Not yet. First there was more conflict in the root of their lineage, the root of the root, the primary connection, Dooku and Yoda, padawan and master. No longer as such, and not because they fought, for padawans and masters fought all the time, trained, sparred, argued, but because one harnessed the light and one did not. But where did it start, how did it happen?
Did it originate from Yoda? It would not have been impossible for portions of the light to be corrupted after so many years fighting to survive, but he had tried his best to keep the light and keep it pure. Even then, he had never intentionally passed on any infection, any darkness. Did the attempt guarantee success? Was the attempt enough to make it alright, to preserve the line, to defend the future?
Was it because Dooku had wanted excellence so much that he clashed with other younglings? Or was it the death of his mother, and the reaction from his father, the wretched man? Perhaps the second apprentice, after Qui-Gon had graduated to knighthood, and her fall, her split from the Order? Did that encourage Dooku’s own fall—did the master learn from the padawan—or would that have happened anyway?
Or had something else occurred, something in the air, the water, the sky, stars, the many moons and suns, to corrupt the relationship? Maybe bad luck had lobbed itself into the mix, enjoying how it transformed the situation beyond repair, recognition. Perhaps they had no say in it at all. Perhaps the Force had wanted it this way. Or perhaps not.
Did this conflict in the root grow with the rest of the plant? Is that why—)
Later: Padmé’s ship settled in the same breath that Dooku’s departed.
Now that they would not be crushed by a thrown piece of machinery, Obi-Wan pulled two legs underneath himself, finding his body strangely weighted and hefty. Anakin stirred, dizzily looking up, and Obi-Wan offered his shoulder for Anakin to lean against so that he could leverage himself up.
Blaster bolts went off, and Obi-Wan glanced up to see Padmé firing after Dooku, even though none of her shots would hit. A few clones stared up after her, and there the enemy went, into the endlessness of space. Padmé turned, and she shone there in the luminescence, like a golden sun or a white star, or perhaps some royal white planet.
“Anakin!” She shouted, clearing the space in no less than five seconds, and Anakin had just managed to pull himself to his feet before she collided into him. Her arms found a home around his neck, and they talked quietly between themselves, both leaning on the other.
Obi-Wan could not hear, but still he stood despite the difficulty, blowing a breath through his nose and turning toward the entrance. There, Yoda approached him, ambling along with his walking stick, and Obi-Wan offered a civil, slow nod.
But Yoda was not looking at him. Yoda only looked at Anakin and Padmé and watched, watched, watched.