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The worst nightmares always start like this: Obi-Wan returns from a day of long, mind-numbing work to find him sitting there by the stove.
Sometimes Anakin turns and his face is molten slag. Sometimes Mustafar leaves no wounds at all.
Obi-Wan is an old man now, or at least he feels like one, and the sand weighs his boots down. His lightsaber is long buried in the dunes. So he doesn’t try to defend himself, only kneels before Anakin and waits for whatever judgment his Padawan chooses to mete out.
In many of the dreams, Anakin yells or beats him bloody or, once, strikes him down with a lightsaber before he can even react. He always takes it in silence, but the pain is never as freeing as one might expect. Self-hatred and self-absorption are two sides of the same coin, and for the sake of the dead, Obi-Wan tries to abstain from both.
Sometimes Anakin just throws his arms around Obi-Wan’s middle and cries.
Obi-Wan’s lungs stutter and without fail he returns the embrace, never questioning the sudden change. He folds one arm around Anakin’s back, fingers curling tightly in the half-burned Jedi tunics, and with the other hand he cradles Anakin’s head to his own chest, heedless of the tears that sear holes through his shirt like acid. Anakin smells like home beneath all the ash, and the touch is comforting in a visceral sort of way even though he knows, intellectually, that it won’t fix anything. This is usually the moment Obi-Wan realizes it’s a dream. They never hugged like this in life.
There are really only two things he wants to tell Anakin, and he always says the second most important one, which is “I love you.” He says that no matter what Anakin does in the nightmare. Using the past tense wasn’t the gravest sin Obi-Wan committed on Mustafar, but only words can be fixed with more words.
In tonight’s dream, Anakin touches his cheek—the texture of his palm is the same after all these years, though his own skin has wrinkled—and Obi-Wan doesn’t have the strength to walk away from him a second time, though the hand burns. He thinks his skin might be melting. Whether the touch is meant as a comfort or a torture, he cannot tell from Anakin’s expression; in the end, he never knew his Padawan as well as he had thought. A silent tear curves over Anakin’s knuckles and evaporates in the sand.
Even in the privacy of his dreams, he does not ask for absolution.