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Anakin Skywalker wouldn’t be the first to admit that his observational skills were not always the best, but he would internally accept that he did have a history of… possibly missing important things on occasion.
That didn’t mean he was blind.
Obi-wan Kenobi was still being held in the medbay. He’d been unconscious when he was found, alone on a ship that belonged to Count Dooku. There was evidence of another person aboard, but wherever they had gone, or how they had gone, was a mystery.
(The memory of that ship still made Anakin shudder. Something had been wrong with it. It was as if the Force, in all its light and song, had been… leeched away from the interior of that ship. He’d never felt anything like it before, and he hoped he never would again.)
The point was, Obi-wan was under more-or-less constant surveillance. No one had told Anakin anything other than his orders to bring his master back to the Temple for healing, due to possible exposure to a Dark Artifact, but honestly Anakin barely cared about reasons at the moment.
Something was wrong with Obi-wan.
It started out small. Repeated conversations. Asking about things Obi-wan should have been fully aware of. Moments where Obi-wan just… stopped paying attention to the world around him, staring at nothing as if completely blind. That was worrying enough.
And then the nightmares started.
Now, Anakin’s master had a tendency toward nightmares. The future liked to press itself on his sleeping mind even when Anakin was close enough to try and wave it away, and there were… older things that Anakin had never been allowed to see that would cause Obi-wan to wake suddenly, shaking and shivering. There were very few Jedi not afflicted with nightmares nowadays.
But these nightmares were different. In all the time Anakin knew Obi-wan, his master had never once woken up screaming. Not until he was rescued from that ship.
(Anakin hated the sound of it. The Force itself writhed when Obi-wan woke screaming, as if the agony and fear in Obi-wan’s voice infected the Force around it. It made Anakin incredibly uneasy, and made him flinch away the first time it had happened in front of him.)
Again. All Jedi had nightmares. It came with the territory of being generals in war. Anakin had more than his fair share, and he’d guided Ahsoka through her own.
Obi-wan claimed he didn’t remember these new nightmares, and the Force rang with an unguarded, shaking truth that made Anakin’s heart sink. Whatever these dreams were, Obi-wan truly didn’t remember them, and it was scaring him as much as it scared Anakin.
And now, this. Anakin wasn’t blind. Obi-wan was getting worse.
He’d started sleepwalking.
Anakin watched Obi-wan take slow, methodical steps around the medbay, eyes open and unblinking, apparently wholly unaware of his surroundings. Kix and Casts were standing with Anakin, also watching Obi-wan circle the medbay in a trance.
“Shouldn’t we stop him?” Anakin asked quietly, “You know, wake him up?”
“It’s dangerous to wake sleepwalkers,” Kix answered just as quietly, “He could fall, or lash out, or any number of other things. The doors are locked. We just need to keep an eye on him. He’ll either wake on his own, or he’ll lay back down and go to… unmoving sleep again.”
Anakin wanted to risk it. The Force was… vibrating. Tense. It almost felt nervous. And it was making Anakin nervous. There was something so eerie about watching Obi-wan’s slow walk around the perimeter of the room, as if he were mapping it out for some unknown reason.
Suddenly, Obi-wan paused. The tension in the Force hiked up, and Anakin found himself freezing, all his muscles coiled and ready to- what? Attack? Flee?
Obi-wan’s head turned until he was facing Anakin. The look of complete… nothing on Obi-wan’s face made Anakin feel utterly unsettled. Tears were running freely down Obi-wan’s face.
“That’s… normal. He hasn’t blinked, that’s normal for some sleepwalkers,” Kix said, sounding more like he was trying to reassure himself than anything else.
“...Anakin… Skywalker…” Obi-wan said slowly, almost dreamily, as if he were carefully tasting each part of Anakin’s name.
“I’m right here, Master,” Anakin said.
He was torn between stepping forward and running for the exit. The tension in the Force felt like it was on the verge of snapping, and Anakin was too. Something was wrong. Something was incredibly, undeniably wrong and Anakin was needed to fix it before anyone got hurt-
Obi-wan smiled emptily, and drool ran over his lips and onto his chest.
“Starborn,” he said, and there was a horrific sound just under his voice that made Anakin flinch back hard, hands flying toward his ears as if he could physically rip the noise of decay out of his body-
And then Obi-wan’s eyes rolled back and he collapsed. Anakin yelped and almost fell over too, fighting his own momentum to try and get to Obi-wan. Kix and Casts were faster, shooting past him and immediately kneeling around Obi-wan’s body.
“He’s seizing!” Casts snapped.
“Hold him! Skywalker, alert the rest of Medical!” Kix ordered, and Anakin found himself frozen for an instant as the Force shuddered and trembled around him.
The tension was fading, slowly, but just into a lower state of readiness. The threat wasn’t gone, whatever it was, and Anakin was convinced that whatever it was was responsible for Obi-wan’s state.
“NOW, SKYWALKER!”
Anakin turned and raced for the door, slamming it open and screaming for the other clones in the bay to ready up. Most were already moving; Kix or Casts had probably hit an alert beforehand. They took Anakin’s panicked cry of “He’s seizing!” in stride, leaving Anakin outside the room and wringing his hands pointlessly.
He knew better than to barge into an in-use room on the medbay, but it was hard to ignore his desire to be there while Obi-wan was hurt. Not that he could do anything, he would be in the way and if Kix didn’t kick him out Casts would gladly leave a bootprint on his ass, but it was Obi-wan in there. Anakin’s master. He wanted to be present in case- in case-
He also wanted to be as far away from Obi-wan as possible. There was something wrong with him, so wrong that the Force itself felt disturbed by its simple presence.
(The word Obi-wan had used, Starborn, echoed in his head. The sound under Obi-wan’s voice, the noise of decay, of entropy, of oroboros, still itched in his ears. Whatever had made that sound was not Obi-wan. It was something else. Something that left Anakin feeling like a bantha left in front of a Dragon’s den. Whatever had made that sound was hungry, and Anakin had a terrible feeling he knew what it wanted from him.)
Anakin took a deep breath and spun around, heading for a comms room. He was going to call the Council as soon as he physically could, and he was going to get some answers. No more keeping them in the dark about what Obi-wan may have been exposed to; they needed to know. Anakin needed to know.
The Force around him went cold, and he shivered.