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In the space between one breath and another, Darth Vader slips into the Force redeemed by the light of his son and opens his eyes again as Anakin Skywalker.
He remembers little of that world between worlds, the lines of everything blurred like hyperspace. No heat or cold or anything at all, Anakin so sensitive to temperature that he typically grates with it.
Only the soft, sweet voice of the Force murmuring about second chances remains, overlaid with the echo of Luke’s. And even that fades.
He opens his eyes mid step, one organic foot placed firmly on the packed dusty earth below him, the other in motion.
It’s his body. His body.
His arms and legs and chest and lungs. Fingers on both hands, forearms up to his elbows, the backs of biceps that move near instantaneously, before he even knows he wants them to. It’s all his.
Anakin takes a gasping breath ripped from the absolute depths of him and is able to breathe.
Longer than he’d care to admit passes, Anakin with one foot raised, hyperventilating in the dirt pathway of a marketplace on a planet he doesn’t recognize, one he knows he’s never been to by the way the Force here feels so distinctly different alone.
What feels like hours spin around him as he clenches and unclenches his fists, flexes his thighs. Breathes without assistance and doesn’t gasp or choke or stutter.
Movement out of the corner of his eye catches his gaze, his eyes flicking over everything fast enough to catalog but almost too quick to recognize anything familiar when he passes over two faces in the crowd. Across the sprawl of the market, on a planet he doesn’t know, in a time he isn’t sure of, is Qui-Gon Jinn and—and—
Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan is across the lines of stalls, weaving in between the rows. Youthful and spry and nerf-tailed, padawan braid dangling over a thin shoulder.
Next to Qui-Gon Jinn.
The one-two punch of being back in his body—his whole, unharmed, hale body—of feeling every inch of his limbs, of seeing his master and his master’s master, both alive, nearly makes him sob.
The noise that comes out of him is a broken, half formed thing.
Kind of like how he feels right now. Worse, maybe.
Anakin staggers, another step forward halted. Shuffles in the dirt, the nondescript boots on his feet sending clouds of dust into the air.
He doesn’t move. Watching, looking. Seeing.
Qui-Gon is saying something, low and quiet in the baritone Anakin barely remembers. Obi-Wan, barely out of his junior padawan years from what Anakin can tell, is walking beside him, distracted and clearly replying absently only to be polite.
Obi-Wan looks like he’s searching for something, sweeping his gaze in gentle bobs of his head up and down the rows of market stalls. His hands, those beloved, despised hands, are fiddling with the hems of his robes. An out of place, fidgeting motion that Anakin only ever saw during those long, hard Clone Wars years when he was three days past sleep and twitchy for it.
He looks so young. Younger than Anakin ever knew him. Willowy and on the thinner side, no beard to make him look older and more refined. Just cheeks that have the barest hints of baby fat on them and eyes so blue and clear that Anakin can see them from twenty paces off.
And Anakin wants—
He wants to go down to his knees in front of Obi-Wan and beg for forgiveness. Press his face to his thighs, wrap his arms around his waist and weep. For mercy and retribution and whatever he deems fit to punish Anakin with for his numerous, varied crimes. Misdeeds and acts of horror both.
For everything. For anything.
Another piece of him, dark and brutal and every inch the all-powerful dictator he’s been the last two decades, wants to bring Obi-Wan down to his knees in front of Anakin. That same furious rage, that overwhelming culpability for every single terrible thing that ever happened to Anakin that had him chasing his former master and any wisp of mention of him across the galaxy for years and years and years.
A vine of hatred so potent it makes the knick knacks in the stall closest to him tremble, shaking in their semi-neat rows and stacks.
Anakin doesn’t know what to do.
The two sides of him—always two, always so black and white, all or nothing, Anakin or Vader, good or evil and nothing in between—riot against each other, locking his body up and leaving him stagnant and still.
He knows he could turn around and walk away.
He knows it as thoroughly as he knows his own name. The Force brought him back, brought him here, to Obi-Wan’s padawanship with no clear guidance or route, no preordained goal except for the expectation that he fix what he broke. To this specific moment.
But Anakin knows that he could watch two of the most influential people in his life have their half-hearted conversation as they weave their way through a crowded market until he lost sight of them and they walked away.
Out of his life. This new life.
Anakin could ignore whatever miraculous feat the Force has done for him. To him. The choice she’s given him with no consideration to how deserving he is.
If he wanted to, really and truly, Anakin could leave his past and his apparent future on the dust of this planet he doesn’t know and walk away.
He could.
He could, so easily.
Part of him wants to. Wants to try again with what he spent many long, hard, terrible years learning. He could make a new path for himself. A different path.
What could he make of himself without most of his fundamental life choices not being made for him? Who could he be?
But across the market, steadily moving out of his field of vision as Anakin stands and waits and ponders and hurts, Obi-Wan smiles.
He smiles. Big and bright with near-perfect white teeth. His left canine tooth the only thing imperfect, slightly crooked and making him all the more charming for it. It’s not aimed at Qui-Gon, perhaps isn’t even at something he says, but Obi-Wan smiles all the same.
And Anakin’s legs, toes he can wiggle and calves that flex and knees that hinge without pain, move without his input.
He scrabbles across the marketplace, dodging stuffed bags and precariously balanced hover trolleys. Ducks out of the way of passersby and market patrons with an ease and fluidity he hasn’t possessed in years.
A voice he hasn’t heard without the rasp of his modulator in more than twenty years comes out croaky and quiet.
“Master,” he chokes out, like a plea. “Master, wait.”
Qui-Gon turns around instead.
Like missing a step when running down the stairs, Anakin aims for something solid and sure to push off of and finds an absence. Nothing at all like what he expected, muscle memory failing him in a crucial moment.
Of course only one of them would respond to that title now.
Obi-Wan turns near moments after Qui-Gon does, his braid tumbling down his back, a fine rope of strawberry-blond in the sunshine. He wants to wrap his fingers around it, to twine it between his knuckles, like he did to his own braid when he was panicked or upset or bored.
Anakin approaches them, quickens his pace, reaches out to do what he doesn’t karking know. Qui-Gon raises an arched brow and places a large, gentle hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder to stop him.
He’s weeping, he realizes. Silent but steadily. The tears drip off his face and plink into the dirt below him.
Neediness, frantic and terrified, spills out of him. He has to convince them of—of what?—to not go, to not leave him here with no credits, no connections, nothing to his name aside from a history so terrible his breath trembles with it.
No path forward, ordained by the Force.
No masters, walking right out of his past.
Anakin was meant to be here, he knows. He can feel it. The Force put him here at this exact time for a reason and while he doesn’t know exactly what it is yet, he’s got a pretty good idea of what the end goal is meant to be. He’ll figure everything else out.
He always has, even for all the good it did him.
He meets Obi-Wan’s eyes through his own blurry gaze and it aches. Feels like coming home and like being shot with a blaster to the chest at point blank range all at once. Anakin should look away, he should get closer, he should never look anywhere else again.
Qui-Gon must be able to clock the frantic roil of his thoughts based on the look on Anakin’s face, that pervasive need tinged with something dark and rotted, and shifts in front of Obi-Wan. Protective, wary. A man as tall as a tree with a tranquility to him that Anakin had forgotten the depth of. So calm, even in the face of undeniable danger.
From behind the bulk of Qui-Gon’s body, Obi-Wan tilts his head out over his shoulder and looks at Anakin.
He huffs out a laugh through his tears, a touch hysterical.
There’s no telling what he looks like right now. Taller than Obi-Wan but not as tall as Qui-Gon. Dressed in clothes he’s never owned in any of his lives. Neat, basic earth-colored tunics and trousers that don’t feel awful on. Calling one of them by their formal title. Coming up to them and crying, projecting a messiness so potent in the Force he knows they can both read every bit of it. Even if they don’t understand.
“Oh,” Obi-Wan says, voice as clear as a bell. He smiles again, smaller this time, and Anakin wants to reach out and hold him, wants to reach out and wrap both hands around his godsdamned throat. “It’s you.”
Qui-Gon slants a curious look down at him, a silent invitation to share his thoughts.
“I think he’s what I’ve been feeling, master.”
And that—that makes Anakin start crying again, harder this time. Trying to reel in the choked sobs coming from his mouth, he clenches both of his fists—skin on skin, bone and sinew underneath, his fists— and attempts to moor himself in the moment with that bright burst of pain.
The Force brought him back here, to this specific time. A younger Qui-Gon and an even younger Obi-Wan, completely unaware of the horrors and joys that will befall them in the years to come. Depending on how old they both are, Anakin in this universe may not even be alive yet. May not even exist at all, if he’s here now. He’s not sure how that works, never has been.
All Anakin knows is that he needs to go with them. To wherever they’re going to go.
He needs to get back to the Temple, needs to remove Sidious’ head from his body. Needs to talk to Yoda and maybe even kriffing Mace Windu. To let them crack his mind open like a flimsi book and read what their combined mistakes will do to the Order and the galaxy they love. Convince them that the way they’ve been doing things, for years, for centuries isn’t working anymore. Hasn’t worked, for ages.
Needs to let the bright, soft light of Obi-Wan’s Force signature swirl around him. To sink into it like he refused to let himself before, last time.
He’ll fix this.
Not everything, due to Sidious likely having pieces in motion decades before the plans started moving. But some of it. Anakin will fix some of it, as retribution for all of the ways he fucked it up the last time.
He’ll rewrite the universe if he has to. Even if the broken shards of the lives he’s lived and the lives he’s touched, ended, irrevocably changed, cut open his hands.
In the here and now, in this moment he’s been given, Qui-Gon hums, looking down at the top of Obi-Wan’s spiky head. “I see,” is all he says, ridiculously un-illuminating. Obi-Wan starts to roll his eyes and stops the action halfway through, when he sees Anakin still watching him.
“Tell us what you’re here for, please,” Qui-Gon asks, still so calm and unbothered. Obi-Wan shifts at the shoulders behind him.
And so Anakin does.
He spills his guts out onto the floor of the marketplace on this planet he doesn’t know, in front of the two people who changed his life first, barring only his mother. Painstakingly shares his tale of aching, awful horror and tentative redemption.
Critical, brutal, bloody pieces are left out of his frantic retelling as to not send Obi-Wan into a tailspin, even though Qui-Gon clearly notices and files those loose ends away for later.
Anakin won’t share their inextricable future with him here, not now when he barely knows this Obi-Wan. Not now, when he’s so bright and smiling and happy. He won’t burden him with the weight of knowing how they destroyed each other.
So Anakin tells them about his past, their future. Owns up to what he did, the darkest parts of him. He watches as Obi-Wan starts to wring his hands within the sleeves of his robe, his mouth pursing, as Qui-Gon’s brow pinches and doesn’t smooth out.
It’s a necessary revelation. Something he must do to make the changes he wants to, with the help he needs. Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier.
He has kept any doubt about the choices he made and the regrets he had locked down inside of him so deep they barely ever saw the light. Luke made these things possible, gave him that final chance, but it still grates. Blame shifts in his throat, lurks like a predator. Decades spent shifting the culpability from himself have led to habits that are hard to break.
He will break them, if it’s the last thing he does. Or the hardest.
But at least Obi-Wan is here. At least he doesn’t look afraid.
When Anakin starts weeping again, the closer he gets to the end, Obi-Wan edges out from behind Qui-Gon and puts his palm, warm and calloused and familiar even when it isn’t, onto Anakin’s arm. The half-dead bond he and his master shared that leads despondently into the past sparks brightly in his head at the touch.
It shoots up plumes of light, fizzling and absolutely delighted at Obi-Wan’s presence. Joyful like a physical, tangible thing.
It’s a lot. Everything that’s happened since he opened his eyes and took in that first breath has been a lot. Obi-Wan’s hand on his arm helps.
Anakin was, is, the Chosen One and all of his choices affected everything in his old life. Each tiny step he made sending cascades of other decisions falling around the galaxy, everything held so precariously in balance to one stupid, mortal soul.
But everything has always revolved around Obi-Wan just as much.
The Force has taken away everything Anakin’s ever known and loved, after he already lost it all himself, but it has given him this.
*
After Anakin’s subpar, sob-filled explanation, they let him accompany them on the remainder of their mission.
By they, he means Qui-Gon. And by accompany, he means after Qui-Gon guided them to a less busy section of the market and meditated over the choice for almost an hour, communing with the Force as if her son wasn't standing right in front of him telling them he came back from the dead forty one years in the past.
Next to him, Obi-Wan fidgets.
He doesn’t even attempt to meditate along with his master, even though Anakin bets he’s already extremely good at it. He just rocks back and forth on his heels and surveys the market. Glances at Anakin occasionally. Hums something sweet and lilting lightly under his breath.
He has no beard to stroke thoughtfully, no time honed placidity. Not yet.
Anakin knows this face, these mannerisms, he knows this man but simultaneously doesn’t know him at all.
“So,” Obi-Wan starts, after they’ve stood for fifteen minutes in silence watching Qui-Gon breathe. Anakin expects a terrible, awful question. Something too difficult, too big to answer. He tenses in preparation. “How old are you?”
Unexpected and less terrible than expected, but still difficult to answer.
He opens his mouth to reply, a number on the tip of his tongue. Then he closes his mouth and considers.
“I don’t know, actually,” he says, trying not to look directly at the way the sunlight refracts off of Obi-Wan’s red-blond buzz cut.
Anakin’s memories of it are blurry—the burr of it along his palms when he pet at Obi-Wan those first few years, the few days before his braid was cut. The floppy, bedraggled look his master had for a year or two before it grew into something more refined.
The Force whispers to him, the same, the same, you and he, your second chance in answer. Anakin snorts. Of course.
“How old are you?”
Fully turned toward him now and looking inquisitive, Obi-Wan says, “I turned twenty one last standard year.”
“I think I might be the same age as you then. Some Force nonsense,” Anakin replies, waving a hand around aimlessly to sum it all up. “But I still have all of my memories, so in body only, I guess.”
Obi-Wan—stern, unemotional, emotionally reticent, blessed Obi-Wan—starts to blush. Anakin watches it happen, bright pink blooming on his cheeks and rushing down his neck and chest, past the collar of his padawan robes.
He has to look away, because what the actual karking fuck?
They don’t speak much more after that, but Obi-Wan hovers in his periphery as they wait for Qui-Gon. A steadfast brightness that Anakin warms himself on, like the sun.
Breathing feels good. Feels like coming alive again.
The marketplace has so many sights and smells, unhindered by the mask he wore for twenty two years. His body is loose, ready to move at his will. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are so alive, so powerful and bright in the Force that it almost makes him dizzy.
As the first hour comes to a close, Obi-Wan shifts next to him, orienting his gaze back to Qui-Gon as he rouses himself from whatever meditative depth he’d fallen to. Attuned to his master like Anakin once was to him.
He turns to look too, already terribly relieved at the indulgent, understanding look on Qui-Gon’s face. Anakin knows, without asking, that Qui-Gon found whatever he was looking for. Knows he’ll be on that ship with them, headed right where he needs to go to start doing whatever it is that he needs to do.
“We will take you back with us. It has very clearly been foretold.”
Obi-Wan hums, something small and pleased and grateful, and Anakin has to swipe the scratchy fabric of his tunic sleeves hard against his eyes so he doesn’t start weeping.
Again.
*
Anakin is relegated to the ship as Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan finish whatever diplomacy their mission entails.
He doesn’t mind, quietly pleased at the inherent sign of trust and insanely happy to jam his body into the tiny onboard ‘fresher to clean off.
No bacta tank, no droids hissing and whirring, no painstaking process. Just his own limbs and the rushed, too rough feeling of a sonic.
After, in a bed that isn’t his, wiggling in sheets that smell like Obi-Wan, like home, he casts himself out as far as he can into the Force and is almost bowled over by the happiness and light that overtakes him.
The Force wiggles like a puppy, an old friend delighted to see him again.
It’s easy, to float along its currents and let them wind and loop him in the signature of this still-unknown planet, the signatures of everyone living on it. Obi-Wan is bright below him, a beacon, bobbing and weaving along, flickering with ideas and thoughts and feelings. Qui-Gon is calmer, wider with a different kind of depth, but still so visible.
He loses time, hours of it, judging by the unimpressed look Obi-Wan casts him as he bursts into the cabin later, covered in dust and missing his outer robe. Qui-Gon follows him, not a hair out of place.
As they travel back to Coruscant, he orbits around them. Answers inane, harmless questions and asks his own, trying to get a better feel for the year he’s in. He’s unsure if he exists in this timeline, no indication of his own Force signature flung out across the cosmos when he set out searching earlier.
Like a loose tooth, Anakin prods at the thought of his mother. Pain, relief, curiosity cycle over and over in his thoughts as he bounces back and away.
Obi-Wan hovers close by. Not with any sense of urgency or fear, but more like he’s drawn to Anakin like a moth to flame.
They sit quietly together much of the time. Anakin can’t stop looking at him, can’t stop cataloging the similarities and differences.
Layers this Obi-Wan, his master so young, against his memories of his master at the peak of their lives. Again against the last time he saw Obi-Wan, older and tired and so willing to let go.
Obi-Wan watches him back, blue eyes curious, like he can peer into Anakin’s brain and poke around. Shift through his thoughts like stacks of flimsi, find whatever it is he’s looking for.
He probably could. The mental aspect of the Force was always so accessible to him, mind tricks and shielding and communication. For how shit he was at processing and expressing his own emotions, he was always able to share them fluently and fluidly in their Force bond, picking up Anakin’s just as easily.
He must be able to feel said residual bond between them, something actively vying to come back to life despite the obvious lack of the other side.
It twangs when Anakin thumbs at it mentally, desperate for that last bit of connection. For something missing to fall back into place.
Landing on Coruscant, unchanged and un-sieged, makes him slightly nauseous. Has his palms sweating, his knees locking tight. Anger so second nature to him that it falls into place the same way breathing did rises in his chest, makes the beast inside of him pace.
There are so many memories here, things he did that he doesn’t want to explore again. Obi-Wan looks at him, catalogs the way he clenches his fists, digs his nails into his palms.
With a chiding hum that’s so familiar it haunts Anakin’s nightmares, even when he was so deeply mired in the dark that everything from before was forcibly forgotten, he peels Anakin’s fingers away from his palms. Uses his calloused, nimble fingers to unclench the death grip Anakin has on himself, winds his own fingers in the gaps.
The easy physicality shocks him, sends him reeling out of his panic about Coruscant straight into surprise at Obi-Wan touching him so casually, so easily.
When he looks up from their entwined hands, Obi-Wan quirks half of a smile up at him. His eyes are clear, liquid. Squeezing Anakin’s hand once, twice, he pulls away, floating after Qui-Gon off the landing platform and into the Temple.
They part ways with only a nod from Qui-Gon at Obi-Wan, something unspoken exchanged. He has no idea the strength of their training bond, Obi-Wan never mentioned it in so many words, but he remembers the span and potency of the grief after Naboo, after the pyre.
Before he turns around and strides off, Obi-Wan inclines his head at Anakin, a look on his face that says come find me, I will see you again, I’ll be waiting for you, if you know where to look.
He’s not sure how he knows, when he isn’t well versed in the more open and honest expressions and emotions that change his master’s young face. Especially when their bond ferried so much between them, when they weren’t closed off and drifting away from each other, lying in different directions.
Anakin will find Obi-Wan after. He will walk these halls where he spilled blood time and time again. He’ll find him and they’ll talk or they’ll sit in silence or maybe they’ll fight, even if they barely know each other.
But that is for after.
He follows Qui-Gon, keeps his eyes firmly on the back of his head, the sway of his thick greying hair gathered in its tie. His body knows this route, the pathway to a place rife with his own overflowing emotions.
Anakin does not want to do this. He does not want to be here, in this place that he destroyed, even if it destroyed him first.
He does it anyway.
Anakin enters the Council chambers with Qui-Gon and lets Yoda and Windu flay him wide open.
Qui-Gon tells his story, shares the bits that are absolutely prevalent—Obi-Wan feeling something so strongly in the Force that he lead them to the marketplace like he heard a siren song of old, Qui-Gon curious and willing, Anakin stumbling up to them in a turmoil of emotions wild enough that it felt like a physical weight, his many admissions, Qui-Gon’s lengthy meditation—then bows and melts into the shadows near the edges of the walls.
Stepping into his place, Anakin breathes deep, holds in his rage as best he can, and submits to the horrifying ordeal of his own history.
He answers the myriad of questions as best he can, tries desperately to maintain the bare minimum grip on his half-assed politeness and quickly diminishing patience. Then, when he grows tired of that, he allows the full expanse of every bit of power inside of him to flood out of him and rush into the Council chamber. Relishing in the barely-hidden fear on Mace Windu’s face and the curious, apprehensive look on Yoda’s.
He pushes every single bit of it, all of his memories, every single thing he experienced, did, ordered, observed, and had happen to him out into the Force between them.
Anakin lets it all go.
He simultaneously wants to fall to his knees and wrap the Force around their throats so tightly they choke. These impulses war inside of him, flickering back and forth so quickly that he’s frozen in place for the second time in so many days.
You did this, he wants to snarl, falling back into patterns of thought so well worn they’ve left barren tracks in the fields of his mind. You took everything I ever cared about from me, prevented those same things from caring about me back in the way that I wanted. The way that I needed. Your misguided Code and the people who enforced and ascribed to it lead directly to the downfall of the Republic as you know it. You did this.
Forgive me, he wants to beg, to plead. You may have been wrong in how you handled me but I was wrong first, something fundamental in me was broken from the start and Palpatine knew it, fostered it, encouraged it. Bent me how he wanted without anyone even realizing. Forgive me for what I did to you both and to this place. Let me make it right. Let me fix the wrongs I did in a time I will do anything to prevent from coming to pass.
Throughout it all, during the most conflicting, terribly juxtaposed conversation of his life, Anakin can feel the brightness Obi-Wan exudes into the Force from simply existing, clear across the Temple.
It dances in his vision when he blinks, luminescent on the backs of his eyelids. Calls out to him without Obi-Wan even knowing, a light guiding him home.
He grits his teeth, reveals his awful truths, and focuses on that light to ground him the same way he spent years during his padawanship and the Clone Wars. The familiarity is both painful and so, so easy.
They believe him, after. Fully.
Evident and obvious in the way they speak, in how their emotions flow past their shields. Yoda and Mace look at each other, glance at Qui-Gon, stare at Anakin.
And then they let him go.
There are explanations and excuses to be made for his presence, a backstory to be knit up for him out of thin air to explain away who he is and why he’s here. Plans are to be made, meetings are to be had. Entire courses of action to be rewritten. Missions to have Shadows sent on, investigations to take place effective immediately.
He doesn’t need to say anything in regards to staying here, with Qui-Gon. With Obi-Wan. The Force vibrates with his will, refracts his attachments, his fury and his love and his loneliness, and shines them on the walls of the Council chamber for all to see.
They will have to kill him before they remove him from Obi-Wan’s side. They won’t kill him.
They need him, need his experiences and his expertise and his abilities. His knowledge.
Anakin will be a vital resource of information over the coming days. His memory will be dragged over with a fine toothed comb. They can figure the explanations of it all out, he truly doesn’t give a shit what they decide. He is politely asked not to leave the premises.
But they let him go. They allow him to walk out of the chamber with Qui-Gon.
And he does.
He leaves, accepts the offer to sleep on Qui-Gon’s couch, a couch that he’s slept on hundreds of times before, his couch for years. Clasps his hand tight in thanks and gratitude and appreciation twice over.
Then he goes to find Obi-Wan.
*
“You’re not breathing correctly,” Obi-Wan tells him, two standard weeks later.
They’re trying to meditate together, pressed knee to knee in some tiny meditation alcove off the Room of a Thousand Fountains that Anakin never knew existed in his ten years of living in the Temple and his twenty years of ignoring it after.
Anakin is unsettled, unmoored, but not unhappy. The Force fluctuates around him, so eager to respond to his thoughts and feelings and movements. Obi-Wan is concerned by it, particularly inclined to meditate it into submission. To help soothe Anakin.
It’s comforting, in a way.
Nothing really changes, even when everything does.
He’s better at meditation after years of gripping the Dark side in his fist, keeping it leashed at his side, in a permanent heel. It was the only way to keep from losing his mind, already predisposed to bursts of rage and pendulum swings of too intense emotions.
Meditation isn’t going to fix all of Anakin’s issues, a lifetime in the making, but it may help a bit.
He can’t help but glare at Obi-Wan, the expression on his face second nature. This expression has been cast at this person hundreds of times before.
Obi-Wan just smiles, full of teeth. It’s a beautiful expression, goofy and sweet. It makes the Force between them go honeyed and golden with Anakin’s odd fondness.
“Pray tell how I’m breathing wrong, I don’t think you can even breathe wrong as long as you’re doing it.”
“So shallow,” Obi-Wan mutters, reaching over and placing his palm flat on Anakin’s belly. It’s so warm he can feel it through his customary dark layers. There are tiny knicks and cuts over Obi-Wan’s knuckles, scars layered underneath. “You’re not taking full deep breaths in.”
Anakin has many things he could say to that.
Wicked, hurtful things about how Obi-Wan, twenty years in his future, would cut him limb from limb and leave him to inhale smoke and superheated air. No wonder he isn’t taking full breaths in when he wasn’t able to breathe on his own at all for over half his life, when all he had were lungs so scorched that they didn’t work without mechanical assistance.
He says nothing, instead. Locks the words behind his teeth, tries to center himself in this moment rather than all the ones that brought him here.
“Here, like this,” Obi-Wan says, shuffling even closer. He demonstrates, modeling the same deep breathing patterns that Anakin’s master taught him when he was ten and having panic attacks twice daily.
The emotional whiplash makes his breaths come even shorter for a few minutes, the fury buried under the melancholy ache buried under an appreciation for this man that spans lifetimes.
He tames it, spools it all in. Processes and feels and sits in this moment and all the ones before it.
Anakin leans closer to Obi-Wan’s warmth and breathes deep.
*
(He looks up Padmé on the holonet.
He can’t help it. A tender, bruised curiosity propelling him, along with a love so potent it drove him to madness over and over again.
Anakin already knows she’s young, calculating backwards from Obi-Wan’s age. Barely double digits but already in line to be queen, painstakingly groomed for leadership.
He won’t reach out, won’t let their paths cross to her detriment this time. But he needs to make sure she’s alright.
And she is. She’s alive. Healthy. As happy as she can be with the responsibilities she bears, doing what she needs to do for her planet.
He aches with a love so bone deep it will never go away, no matter how many lifetimes he experiences or how many timelines he falls into.
Anakin lets her go.)
*
He accompanies Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan on their missions, both on Coruscant and off-planet.
There’s always a halfhearted reason given to those who ask why some random, unknown, and oddly powerful pseudo-knight is accompanying them that’s handwaved away. Lukewarm explanations of Qui-Gon’s maverick tendencies and Obi-Wan’s desperate attempts to keep him in line, mumbles of Jedi Watchmen from far reaching, remote planets.
Anakin gives no insight, because he doesn’t truthfully give a fuck. As long as he’s here and able to go along with them wherever they go.
They spend a lot of time together.
Obi-Wan, so young and not yet burdened by all the hardships that will shape him into who he was when Anakin knew him best, is an absolute dickhead. Smart as a whip, sly, sarcastic to a fault. Caustic, when he doesn’t always mean to be. Kind, even when he’s trying not to be.
Qui-Gon gives him leeway that’s surprising—laughs at his jokes, hums unimpressed at his copious snark. Guides him occasionally, although it’s clear it’s becoming less necessary as Obi-Wan grows. He straightens under Qui-Gon’s gaze, desperate to please. Rapidly trying to form himself into someone Qui-Gon would be proud of when he so blatantly already is.
Anakin adores him. Is deeply annoyed by him in turn, but adores him.
It’s easy to, even if he’s a bit of a prick.
There are echoes of the Obi-Wan he spent years with. Maybe not echoes, when he thinks about it more critically, chronologically. Perhaps the initial sounds. The Obi-Wan he knew had the echoes, the long reaching aspects of his personality still so potent that they lasted long into his adulthood.
He enjoys spending time with them, in the same way he enjoys everything in this universe where he is both alive and whole. Wonders, in his own timeline, if Qui-Gon would have made all the difference. A bridge between Obi-Wan’s rigidity and Anakin’s fast and loose nature. Knows, even as he contemplates, that it probably wouldn’t have changed enough. There was no way to prevent Anakin from falling.
He was always going to have to fall, to make mistake after mistake after mistake. Maybe it was the only way to get here. A way to learn lessons that only these experiences would teach him, even if they fucking hurt and grate and burnt every step of the way.
Anakin shrugs off the hypotheticals. Channels Qui-Gon and his mantra that makes Obi-Wan send frissions of annoyed acceptance out into the Force and lives in the present.
He’s grateful, beyond words and beyond coherent thoughts, to get to know this version of his master.
They drink tea together, knees touching under the table that Anakin ate breakfast at every morning. Afternoons are spent meditating, trying to fit themselves together in a space Anakin knows full well would be solved by their bond being whole again. Evenings pass quickly in the training salles, Obi-Wan’s Soresu beautiful but not exactly perfect yet.
Obi-Wan falls asleep next to him on the couch a few nights a week, notorious, historical podraces that Anakin can remember viciously wanting to experience playing on mute on the holonet.
They eat at Dex’s, poke around the Temple, volunteer to teach some of the junior padawans different katas. On one extremely memorable occasion, Obi-Wan shimmies into civilian clothing and leads him by the hand down to a club on one of the lower levels that no longer existed by the time Anakin was old enough to experience it, shares a drink with him that makes Anakin’s vision blur and slide together.
They spend a lot of time trying to hide their missteps and minor rule breaking from an all-knowing Qui-Gon.
There’s meditation and sparring and eating and standing with their shoulders overlapping, just like all the godsdamned times they did before. It’s like living a decade of his life over again, getting to fast forward and savor all of the best parts. Speedrunning it with an Obi-Wan that is the same but so, so different and a version of himself that knows more than he has any right to.
Anakin dispenses tiny bits of truth about their previous life together slowly over time, dragging his feet. Cautious around sharing too much with Obi-Wan at once. Trying not to reveal anything that might hurt, that could send Obi-Wan into a spiral of self-doubt and fear, even as he pries and pokes and prods.
He has harmed this man in every possible way. Now that Anakin has the chance to prevent much of that harm from coming to pass, he grips onto it with both hands. But it’s difficult, in the face of Obi-Wan’s powerful, all consuming curiosity.
Obi-Wan, quiet and halting, tells him of Bandomeer in a windowsill, looking out over the atrium, feet dangling over the edge. The distress of leaving the Temple without being chosen, shipped off to farm for the rest of his life. Sharp, acidic fear at Xanatos, the slave collar clipped around his neck, offering his life for Qui-Gon’s without a second thought, and being brought home, home, home.
In choppy, short bursts, even more terse than the story of his ascent to padawanship, Obi-Wan talks about Melida/Daan. His sentences tighten up to three or four words at a time, his voice wavering. He hurts, even now. Twice, his master was almost barred from the Jedi Order and twice he returned.
Anakin has no idea how his master was able to bury down the pain of these experiences, not when they make Obi-Wan’s mouth and Force signature tremble in the here and now.
He goes still at these stories, hands twined tightly into his sleeves. Things from their shared past slot into place—the flickering, varied emotions after Qui-Gon’s death making more sense than they ever have.
He shares stories in turn, tells rambling, self-glorifying tales of the missions they went on pre-war. Sketches the breadth and depth of Obi-Wan’s relationship with his commander, with his men, all of the people he met who loved him and all of the people who wanted to kill him but let him live anyway.
The Force between them goes melancholy with it sometimes, blue with Anakin’s endless yearning for those simpler times, shot through with fiery heat at the betrayal and the dismissal and the pain he carried around even then. Obi-Wan wraps him in his signature, soothing and steady.
Anakin talks about how they split, fractured, crumbled at their foundation until they cleaved in two. Explains how it wasn’t Obi-Wan’s fault, not necessarily, not always. Reveals in a choked voice that he knows, he knows, that he went about everything all wrong. That he wanted too much, from everyone and everything, and that greedy desire to have it all mixed with his own arrogance and fear was their downfall.
It takes effort, to talk about Mustafar. Requires all of Anakin’s strength and stubbornness to put words to one of the worst experiences of his life, but he does. Both Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon know what he did to the younglings, know the part he played in Order 66 and everything after, but he’s never spoken about the confrontation before. The things they did to each other, the betrayals and the wounds.
Eyebrows furrowed, mouth turned down, Obi-Wan listens and listens and listens until he goes blank, his facial expression wiped clean.
He is so angry at himself, Anakin knows. He can feel it, Obi-Wan’s despondent, too-big emotions. Angry at how they failed each other, how they talked past one another for years. How they hurt each other so, so much.
In the Force he goes crystalline and breakable, one firm tap and he’ll fall apart.
“Darling,” Obi-Wan murmurs eventually, the pet name sending a shock of delightnostalgiahurt down Anakin’s spine. He forgot. He’d forgotten, but now he remembers. “I apologize that I, a version of me, didn’t help take some of that burden off your shoulders. That I let you bear it alone.”
Through tear filled eyes, he looks at Anakin and sees.
“You are not the only person at fault in a relationship that sounds beyond complex. You are not the only person holding up the universe, Chosen One or not, and no one should’ve made you feel as though that was true.”
“I know,” Anakin croaks out, trying not to grab at Obi-Wan’s hands, desperate for connection the same way he’s always been. Needing so fucking much, all the time. “But it was me. I was built wrong.”
“You’re built just fine,” Obi-Wan counters, reaching across their laps to interlace their fingers together. Exactly like Anakin wanted. Needed. “And you’re here. You’re trying again and you aren’t alone. That’s what matters.”
Anakin hasn’t cried since that first moment here, the initial breath he took that caught in his throat and almost choked him. He doesn’t want to cry now, but his eyes well up with hot tears regardless, blurring and softening Obi-Wan across from him.
Obi-Wan unwinds their hands, draws Anakin’s face into his calloused palms, warm and familiar and beloved. He murmurs soft, tiny words of assurance to him, stroking the rough pads of his thumbs under the delicate skin beneath Anakin’s eyes.
When he throws himself into Obi-Wan’s arms, tucks his face into the soft curve of his neck and weeps, Obi-Wan lets him. Sweeps him in close even though Anakin is so much taller and broader than he is, runs a hand through Anakin’s tangled curls. Doesn’t push him away.
Brings him even closer, presses their frantically beating hearts together.
“You’re alright, dear heart. You made it this far. You’ll make it farther.”
Yes, yes, yes, the Force sings, thrumming between them and absolutely delighted. Here is what you wanted, here is what will make you whole. This is how the fabric of the universe will be balanced.
Anakin does his best to believe it.
*
(They take him to Tatooine. They take him to see his mother.
Obi-Wan at his side, Qui-Gon at his back. An odd chaperone, but a necessary one. Because even though—Anakin finds out later—it was Obi-Wan’s idea, they won’t let he and Anakin leave the planet alone. Not without supervision.
As if Qui-Gon would stop either of them, once they set their minds to something. As if he could.
They take him to Tatooine to see his mother, to put eyes on the tangible gap of his being in this universe.
It’s easy to confirm that he doesn’t exist. That here, in this nook of a cousin universe, Anakin Skywalker is nothing but a displaced memory in time.
Shmi looks the same, looks whole and worn and determined as she ever was.
No Force-beget child, no panicked concern for his shifting whereabouts, no scraping by to make sure he had a childhood that wasn’t all labor and servitude. Just survival. Her and a group of similar aged women doing their best on this water starved rock.
He plans to stay away at first, but he can’t.
She is surprised, scared, when he approaches. Terrified when he breaks down in unintelligible tears. Understanding and cautious as Obi-Wan breaks off from Qui-Gon’s quiet observance and comes to explain, in measured, kind words.
Shmi takes Anakin into her arms, a child she will never know, and lets him cry into the curve of her neck.
They barter and scheme—Obi-Wan with his silver tongue and bright mind, Qui-Gon with his endless patience, Anakin with the fierce, furious determination of a child who lost his mother once and will not again.
Shmi is freed. Her belongings are packed, her goodbyes made. Anakin frees his mother who isn’t his mother, watches as she is given a new life under the care of a senator that he was a hair’s breadth away from killing multiple times in his past.
She kisses his cheeks, his forehead, the bridge of his nose when they part. A series of actions she did hundreds of times in Anakin’s youth.
He lets her go too, but not without a promise to check in occasionally, and a comm unit bundled into her pack.)
*
Anakin is incredibly, undeniably possessive of Obi-Wan.
This is unsurprising, seeing as he’s always been possessive of Obi-Wan. His master, his partner, his other half of their team. His wayward Jedi to destroy, to bend to his will and wipe from existence. No one else’s.
It’s even easier now, to let that possessiveness lap and lick across their still-halved bond. This is his person, his anchor, young and old and everything between.
He is attached. To this Obi-Wan, to the one he knew, the one he now knows. In all manner of ways. In every universe.
He sticks close, physically and otherwise. Before long, Qui-Gon begins referring to the two of them in plural, Anakin becoming his padawan’s ever present shadow. Obi-Wan’s friends eye him warily, then accept his presence with minimal bitching when it’s obvious he isn’t going anywhere. His place is a step behind and to the left of Obi-Wan.
Anakin is not pushed away.
There are no long winded treatises about the Code, no soft, emotionless warnings about attachment. Not verbally, at least. Just Obi-Wan, young and bright and curious, letting him in. Allowing him close.
And gods, isn’t that novel?
Obi-Wan needed him before, loved him dearly in a way that was only evident in hindsight and through a tilted head and squinted eyes. But it was there. It was always there.
This Obi-Wan, less experienced and not so strictly attached to the Code and all the ways it failed him, doesn’t begrudge him his clinginess. Lets Anakin hover, lets him sweep both palms over his shoulders, tidy his already impeccable robes, knock their elbows and knees together. Looks for and to him when he enters a room.
His Force signature reaches across all of their gaps, holds a hand out to him and folds him into that brightness unconsciously.
Qui-Gon says nothing, although he raises his eyebrows at their ever decreasing proximity. Yoda mumbles backwards parables, quotes the Code, but actually does very little when they check in for their periodic meetings. Mace rolls his eyes into the back of his head and presses fingertips into his temples.
Obi-Wan says all the right things when confronted, beatific and attentive. The picture perfect senior padawan. Assuring them against any concerns of attachment, though he pokes at Anakin in the Force, long-suffering yet pleased. An echo of their Force bond has Obi-Wan’s mental voice, fond, telling him, look what you’ve done now.
Anakin snorts under his breath and pointedly reminds everyone in the room that if they don’t let him have this, they won’t have anything. Then where will they be?
He doesn’t feel bad about it.
Anakin will never, ever feel bad about this.
*
Plans to rewrite the universe are made and enacted behind the scenes.
Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, and subsequently also Anakin, are sent on long, winding recon missions, to Kamino and Geonosis and a whole list of planets that Anakin spent hours scraping from the depths of his memory.
Jedi Shadows do what they do best and the general populace, and stars willing, Palpatine, are none the wiser.
And Anakin—for once Anakin is not responsible. Not wholly. There are no burdens placed on his shoulders alone this time, the war too far out to be a real concern yet, even as the Council plans and plots and alters the course of history.
He is able to breathe. Allowed to enjoy traveling the galaxy with his master and his master’s master, falling back into patterns from his padawan years that he thought were long forgotten.
There is a mess out there, something wound so tightly and inextricably that it will take years to unravel it, but right now—right now it is out of his hands. He did what he could, gave all of the necessary pieces of information to the people who could actually fucking do something about it.
Maybe in six months, maybe in a year, maybe in five, he will be sent to behead Palpatine in his senatorial office. He will do it, willingly and readily. Revenge is bitter on his tongue, a flavor he has had years to memorize, to want so badly it made his teeth ache. Perhaps in fifteen years he will lead a clone battalion in battle again, will stand at the forefront of a sea of familiar, identical souls, though he hopes for all their godsdamned sakes that he won’t.
But for now, for now, Anakin exists and feels and learns and experiences with a freedom he has never had before.
He is not beholden to the Jedi, not bound to a marriage he worked so damn hard to keep happy but also was forced to keep hidden close to his chest. He has no master. Is not a master, himself.
Anakin floats and rests and follows Obi-Wan around the galaxy like a particularly devoted pet.
Qui-Gon teaches Obi-Wan, guides him and points him on a path that Anakin saw all of the sturdy foundations of throughout his own padawanship. Anakin, always around, experiences the benefits of this teaching, absorbing Qui-Gon’s various Qui-Gonisms like a sponge. Even when they’re absolutely bullshit.
He layers what he learns from Qui-Gon over what he learned from Obi-Wan, sandwiching everything Sidious attempted to teach him through pain and torture and disastrous want in between the wisdom of two masters at opposite ends of the Jedi spectrum.
Learning wise, Anakin has always done best with being presented with multiple viewpoints and picking and choosing the bits he likes best. Being forced into one direction made him prickly, stubborn. Seeing the broad variety of thoughts and interpretations of the Force and its pedagogies is nice. Interesting.
Plus, he can wind Obi-Wan up like nothing karking else when he starts parroting Qui-Gon’s mythical bullshit back at him. It’s an easy, almost pleasant existence. There is little that can hurt him here, not for years to come, and actions are already being taken to prevent that.
The least he can do is enjoy it, after everything.
*
Obi-Wan gets shot clean through his shoulder with a blaster on a bullshit, milk run mission that was supposed to be so simple that Qui-Gon barely spent time briefing them on it.
Anakin is minding his own business, casually casing the town square of whatever irrelevant planet they’re on, flexing his awareness in the Force occasionally. He’s keeping tabs on both Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon in the back of his mind, as is customary. But he isn’t worried.
There is little discord on this planet, judging from the mission briefing and the relatively still presence of the Force.
He’s also, technically, not allowed to engage or do anything even remotely untoward when he goes on these missions. In this timeline, Anakin is a Jedi in name only. It’s a cloak he wears in the safety of the Temple to avoid question.
Yoda and Mace would rather drop dead than allow him to wield a lightsaber or act inappropriately in any way while wearing the Jedi mantle.
So Anakin doesn’t really care, for the most part. He’s fine with fucking off with his hands in his pockets, rocking on his heels as Obi-Wan loops peace-keeping circles around whatever pissed off politician or dignitary they’re sent to talk down when they aren’t investigating the creeping edge of fascism across the galaxy.
Qui-Gon doesn’t really seem to mind either, content with letting Obi-Wan run the show. He and Anakin stand behind Obi-Wan like tall, lanky escorts most of the time, calm and relatively menacing in turns.
It makes Obi-Wan huff and mutter to himself sometimes, agitated by their supposed lack of commitment and complete willingness to let him do all the work. Anakin can feel the pleased sense of satisfaction in him though. He likes that they stand back and give him space to talk, allow him to draw from that deep, endless well of patience inside of him and piece things back together for willing and unwilling parties. Just like his master did, too.
But here, now, the bright, unfortunately familiar flash of painpainpain surges up the half-rendered bond inside of Anakin and instantly disconnects him from all rational thought.
He is immediately, furiously beside himself. So close to rage in a blink of an eye that it’s almost startling. Obi-Wan’s pain has lived inside of him for years and has always made him feel exactly like this.
The anger that lives in his bones, that lines his foundations, rises up so swiftly and so potently that his hearing cuts out. Only the rush of his heartbeat in his ears is left, his choppy, heaving breath.
It takes mere seconds to locate Obi-Wan in a backstreet off of the square. Qui-Gon is also immediately alerted, his quietly beseeching Force signature wrapping around the both of them, centering himself against their existences to find them quicker.
Someone, nondescript and irrelevant, their face not even registering in Anakin’s mind, is aiming a blaster at Obi-Wan, where he sits splayed on the ground.
Anakin uses his grip on the Force to yank the aggressor off their feet, legs dangling and kicking and hands scrabbling at their throat. It’s so reminiscent of his years as Vader that it almost feels nostalgic, a blank sort of calm settling over him.
This was who he was. It is also who he is. There’s a comfort in the familiarity. The patterns of behavior.
Of course Anakin would make his way back here. Nothing ever really goes away.
With a flick of his fingers, Anakin slams them into the ground with a choked off scream and a wet crunch. Obi-Wan is shouting, mouth pulled into a grimace where he’s sprawled on the ground. There’s blood down his tunics, blood on the ferrocrete beneath him.
The singed hole in the cream of Obi-Wan’s robes is all he can look at.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Qui-Gon’s off-kilter attempts at soothing him register. But he is too—he is too something. Too untethered, too furious.
Too afraid.
He makes no move to go toward Obi-Wan, mostly because within seconds, Obi-Wan is hauling himself to his feet and swaying toward Anakin.
And stars, is he absolutely livid, incandescent with it. His mouth is still moving even though Anakin can’t hear him. Gripping his shoulder, fingers slick with his own blood, he gets into Anakin’s face even though he’s almost a full head shorter than him and snarls, furious.
There’s that temper, Anakin thinks absently. There’s that fury that almost got Obi-Wan sent away from the Jedi Order completely. Anger he’s never seen as potent and as clear as this.
It’s beautiful. Obi-Wan is beautiful. The anger is too, white-hot like flames. The glow of lava. Beautiful in a way that invites pain. Look but don’t touch.
Anakin would like to put his palms to him, wants to burn.
His master was angry with him often, sure. Agitated and fed up, too. Angry in a way that belied his fear at Anakin acting recklessly and getting hurt. Disappointed by his failure to live up to his standards or by his ridiculous planning and scheming, more so than ever being truly angry.
But this is anger. Raw and bright and hot to the touch in the Force.
Anakin’s hearing comes back all at once, just in time for him to tune back in to Obi-Wan furiously ranting.
“I don’t know who you think you are, Anakin Skywalker,” Obi-Wan hisses, finger jabbing hard into the leather of Anakin’s tabards, “but if you ever, ever harm another living being in order to protect me when I am more than capable of doing so myself, without bloodshed, I will never speak to you again.”
His own agitation rises to meet Obi-Wan’s without hesitation, pressing against it in the Force. Unstoppable force and immovable object, like crashing a speeder straight into a wall.
“You were going to be overwhelmed, you already got shot.” He clenches his fists to stop from putting his hands on Obi-Wan. “You need someone to watch your back. And that will always be me.”
He says it like a promise. An oath.
“Even if you don’t like the way it looks. Especially then.”
Obi-Wan is twenty one, still a Jedi in all the ways that matter. He has not yet sliced a Sith in half to protect his master. Hasn’t brushed against the Dark side and recognized it within himself. Hasn’t stood with his back to hundreds of clones and felt their lives be snuffed out in waves. He does not know the world the way Anakin knows it, doesn’t know the extent of the blood on his hands, even when he tried to embody the Code in the best way he could.
And he won’t, if Anakin can help it. But that doesn't mean that Anakin won’t do everything in his power to make sure he prevents that exact future.
Qui-Gon is smartly silent a few paces off, watching them both with morbid curiosity.
“I do not need—”
“Shut up. You needed me, I was there.”
That’s just the way it is. The way it will be.
He doesn’t say, your pain called to me, I heard it the same way I hear you say my name, I will always, always come.
“Don’t tell me to shut up.” Obi-Wan’s voice edges into a preternatural calm that does not bode well for anyone involved. His affect goes flat, his expression shuttering. Anakin closes his eyes and rubs his fingers against the bridge of his nose.
It’s easy to forget about Obi-Wan’s holier-than-thou attitude and rigid adherence to a Code that gives children literal laser swords but tells them not to use them with excessive force when they’ve been having such a good time being young adults together.
Even if Anakin is technically over forty. But that’s neither here nor there.
This padawan version of Obi-Wan may be more accepting, willing to reach a hand out to Anakin across the gap of attachment, but he’s still Obi-Wan at his core.
Anakin’s head hurts. His heart continues to race. He wants to put his hand over the hole in Obi-Wan’s shoulder so badly it feels like a physical presence weighing down on his chest.
He could bend the Force to his will, heal it instantly. But he doesn’t. Anakin doesn’t want to anger Obi-Wan any more than he already has.
Which is why he opens his big, stupid mouth instead.
“Over and done with now, nothing to do about it. That guy’s dead, you’re alive. Be angry with me all you’d like, I’m not letting you get offed on some tiny backstreet in a podunk town on a planet that doesn’t even matter.”
Obi-Wan’s mouth snaps shut. He looks at Anakin for a few seconds, before turning around and stomping away, blood still dripping down the back of his shoulder.
Qui-Gon steps neatly out of his way as he passes, giving Anakin a supremely unimpressed look as he does it.
Karking hell.
*
Obi-Wan doesn’t talk to him for two straight days.
It’s impressive, for how fucking agitating it is. They live together. Anakin sleeps on the couch in his living room, for fuck’s sake. They have half of a bond tying them so tightly together that Anakin can tell when Obi-Wan wakes up in the morning, his eyes blinking open. Is able to feel when he falls asleep, drifting in that pre-dream state where the impressions of his thoughts come sideways, abstract.
The tension on the way back to Coruscant is tangible. Qui-Gon says nothing to anyone, citing a need to meditate that Anakin knows is just a ploy to get away from the two of them and their piss poor energy. That, and the agitation of having to explain to the ruling board of the small planet why one of their Jedi liaisons killed a man in cold blood in their streets because their resident negotiator was too busy throwing a fit.
Obi-Wan sits, stock still and silent—a bacta patch slapped on his shoulder with a bandage wrapped tight around it, that Anakin can practically feel under his own clothes—and stares out the transparisteel windows for hours.
Anakin watches him, unable to stop.
Even though he can tell it just ratchets Obi-Wan’s anger, his fury and agitation, up higher.
When they get back home, it’s a bit easier. They can spread out in their respective spaces, take time to process separately, although all Anakin wants to do is sit outside of Obi-Wan’s door, his old door, and wait until he’s let back in.
He doesn’t need to process. He has nothing to feel guilty or sorry for. Anakin would, and will, do it again in a heartbeat.
Qui-Gon likely needs time to practice whatever spiel he’s going to give Anakin, concerned for his mental well being as if he didn’t spend years living and breathing nothing but the Dark side. Obi-Wan’s motivations for silence and space are harder to tack down, aside from the fury of Anakin killing someone who hurt him.
He’s flat on his back in the half-dark of the living room on the third night, practicing an apology speech that he absolutely doesn’t believe in when Obi-Wan ventures out of his bedroom for the first time in days.
He’s in pajamas, small and comfortable and sleep rumpled. Anakin wants to touch him so badly it feels like a physical ache.
With a prim sort of resignation, he leans over the couch and pokes at Anakin’s legs until he sits up. Then he looks down his nose at him, hands on his hips, until Anakin gets with the program and stands up as well. Even playing field, he supposes.
He also knows that he’ll do pretty much anything Obi-Wan wants, although he’ll probably complain about it a bit.
They just stand in the living room for a beat, looking at each other.
Obi-Wan takes a deep, fortifying breath. Then tucks his hands against his opposite forearms, the way he would if he were wearing his robes. It looks silly in his short sleeved pajama tunic, and he must realize that, because he clasps his hands together shortly after.
“I’ve spent the last two and a half days thinking,” he starts, which never bodes well.
Anakin opens his mouth to say exactly that, but shuts it with a click when Obi-Wan gives him a look. He’s rearing up for a speech then, which, whatever. Fine. Anakin will listen relatively willingly, if it means Obi-Wan will talk to him again.
“You come from a completely different time. Your morals and internal compass are surprisingly robust for essentially being a genocidal mass murderer for two decades and then immediately falling right into the past. I should give you more credit, even if you make me so angry I can’t see straight.”
Obi-Wan comes closer, hesitant like a particularly twitchy lothcat.
“Thanks, I guess.” If Anakin sounds petulant, it’s because he is. Even if it’s the truth.
“I’m trying to apologize, but I’m not doing very well,” Obi-Wan muses, tapping his pointer finger against his lower lip. Anakin assumes he would be stroking his beard, if he had one. The motion draws his eyes to Obi-Wan’s mouth, to the physicality of it. The way his plush lip indents with the steady pressure.
“You don’t need to say sorry,” Anakin mumbles, still zeroed in on Obi-Wan’s fucking mouth. “I can admit I overreacted, to an extent. Probably didn’t need to kill that guy.”
“No,” Obi-Wan agrees, “likely not. But like you said, what’s done is done. Nothing we can do about it at this point in time aside from learn from it.”
Anakin doesn’t expect to do much learning around this subject, but he nods anyway, flicking his gaze up to the luminous glow of Obi-Wan’s eyes in the dark. The partial bond between them hums, pleased. The Force likes that they’re here, apologizing to each other as best they can.
Without another word, Obi-Wan darts into Anakin’s space. It makes Anakin start, his arms lifting up with a jolt. Which just gives Obi-Wan the space to tuck his head under Anakin’s chin, winding his arms around his waist and locking them together at the small of his back.
Anakin doesn’t move for a moment, absolutely stunned into stillness.
Then, all at once, he melts forward, looping his arms around Obi-Wan’s shoulders and resting his face against the side of his head. It puts the crown of his head at the perfect height, the prickly fuzz of his buzz cut tickling the sensitive skin of Anakin’s neck.
He smells good, warm. Like home.
Mumbling from where his mouth is pressed against Anakin’s chest, Obi-Wan keeps talking. “I won’t thank you for killing a man for me, but I appreciate you not wanting me to die.”
That’s as good as Anakin knows he’ll get.
“You don’t have to thank me, but you’ll probably have to mentally adjust to the fact that it will happen again.”
Obi-Wan shrugs, the movement making Anakin’s arms shift from where they’re resting across his shoulders.
“People will try to kill you and I’ll be there to make sure they don’t,” he points out, when he should shut the fuck up. “You are particularly murderable.”
It shouldn’t be funny, seeing as Anakin used his own hands and a mockery of the weapon they both loved to kill the man in his arms.
But Obi-Wan laughs, bright and clear. He tightens his grip on Anakin’s waist, bumps their legs together.
Both the laughter and the proximity make Anakin smile against his hair, deliriously happy.
*
(Anakin tries not to think of the twins.
Like a low level hum in the background of his life, he aches with the guilt and the rage and the fear of Leia, of what he did to her. So similar and yet so different to what he did to her mother.
He had time, with Luke. Not much, but enough to shift the fabric of their universe. Of his. He was able to make his apologies, his excuses, then, to a boy who bore the mantle of everything Anakin shrugged off for something darker.
He didn’t get that with Leia. He never will, even if he thought she would’ve ever wanted it.
Anger licks up the back of his spine—fury at Obi-Wan for hiding the last two pieces of Padmé, at the Larses and the Organas, and himself, himself, himself. Anger directed inwards when before it only ever spilled outwards.
But he works through it. He breathes with it, holds it inside of himself then scatters it to the Force like ashes on the wind.
It’s all he can do.
All he’ll ever be able to do, aside from keep the two of them bright and shining and full of vengeance and righteousness in his memory.)
*
He and Obi-Wan spar a lot. In the downtime between missions, in cramped cargo holds actually on said missions. In the gaps of time and the open spaces of wherever they end up.
It’s fun. There’s no overarching need to secure Obi-Wan’s sparse yet poignant praise and acceptance, because he surprisingly already has it. This Obi-Wan is free with his feedback, pointing out tiny ways Anakin can get better without lecturing.
He’s free with his compliments too, all warm looks and smirking mouth.
Anakin is technically over forty fucking years old. He had a wife. Obi-Wan at barely the age of most senior padawans shouldn’t make him blush, his ears going pink.
He should be stronger than this, but he really, really isn’t.
Maybe it’s Obi-Wan, or maybe it’s Anakin, with all the knowledge he has, that makes the pointers and tips and jokes feel constructive rather than critical. Perhaps they were always like that, and he simply couldn't see it then.
Either way, testing their mettle against one another both in ‘saber combat and hand to hand is fun. Exciting. Physical in a way that Anakin has come to need, after touching almost no one for as long as he did. And for all the years of wanting to touch before then.
Obi-Wan is good, but Anakin is better.
Sparring with him is still a challenge though. Even with decades of experience on him, Anakin doesn’t win every time. Especially not without actively and eagerly tapping into the Dark side. It took him a few weeks to get used to his limbs being the length they are now too, where his body fit in space.
It’s here, during one of these inconsequential training bouts, where everything changes.
Where Anakin, born again and again and again by the Force’s will, loses the karking plot.
He gets Obi-Wan beneath him, a correctly timed boot to the delicate bones of his ankle. Off balance just enough to tip him over, his training ‘saber flailing and his mouth going wide, but no sound coming out.
Hitting the ground hard, he blinks up at the ceiling in a daze. Anakin is gearing up to say something cutting with the aim of turning Obi-Wan that beautiful bright red he goes when he’s particularly agitated, when Obi-Wan leans up on one elbow, flicks his hand, and in a truly unnecessary and superfluous use of the Force, knocks him clean off his feet.
The sudden twist of gravity has him yelping, extremely undignified for a man of both his age and status. His head thunks hollowly against the padded floor of the training mat, one shoulder smacking against Obi-Wan’s, the other hitting the floor next to him to just barely avoid crushing him with his entire body weight.
He ends up half on top of Obi-Wan, the wind knocked clean out of him from the impact of his body on the floor and Obi-Wan’s bony shoulder to his chest. It makes him groan, a breathless wisp of a thing, until he can force air back in his lungs.
Obi-Wan’s bright, musical laughter peels out of him, floating around the room like a tangible thing. The juddering of his chest makes Anakin’s body rock slightly, sprawled over him as he is.
Surprisingly, there’s no lingering hints of anger or embarrassment. He doesn’t want to demand Obi-Wan get back up, for them to go again. To pretend that he didn’t just get brought clean off his feet after winning their spar.
He’s fine right here, both knocked down by each other, hearts pressed together.
Anakin rolls over onto his side to better see him, his arm brushing Obi-Wan’s closest one, and watches as he laughs so hard his eyes crinkle up.
“Not sure that’s a viable tactic for real battle, but it was amusing all the same.”
“Yeah,” he mumbles, distracted by the smell of clean sweat and the underlying scent of Obi-Wan, the same even now. “Amusing for you.”
“As if you don’t delight in seeing me fall on my ass.”
Hiding a smile, Anakin attempts a shrug from where they’re still twined together, because yeah, he does enjoy that. No matter when or how it happens.
They breathe together for a few moments, training ‘sabers still humming where they’ve rolled into opposite corners of the room. He would stay here, if he could. Just like this, for as long as Obi-Wan would let him.
He must be able to hear it, down their halved bond, or he can sense Anakin’s pink, contented feelings in the Force, because Obi-Wan tilts his head closer to Anakin’s and grins. Then brushes his calloused fingers against Anakin’s cheek, before sliding up into the hair at his temple to smooth his unruly curls down.
“Mm, damp,” he mutters, nose scrunching in distaste. “My mistake.”
Before he can move, Anakin snaps his own hand out, cupping it over Obi-Wan’s to prevent him from breaking contact.
Don’t go, he wants to say. Don’t pull away. Touch me more.
He wants to get closer. Always wanting, always scrabbling for more proximity. Needy, needy thing. Endlessly coveting, desiring.
When he shifts at the hips, pressing the front of his torso to Obi-Wan’s, he doesn’t move. Simply lies beneath him, a hand still twined in his hair.
“Are you alright?” Obi-Wan asks, impressively neutral rather than actively concerned. His pupils are large, eyes bright and glittering. From the adrenaline, most likely.
Honesty cracks Anakin’s chest wide open. “I want to be closer to you.”
He isn’t sure exactly what he means, only that he means it so wholly and intensely it feels like an integral part of his make-up, his very being. Anakin exists, therefore he wants to be closer to Obi-Wan than he is. Decades in the making, even if the emotion propelling the desire changed over time.
Under him, Obi-Wan hums and his exhale makes the sweaty curls near Anakin’s ear ruffle.
“Well,” Obi-Wan says, still so calm sounding. He snakes the arm that Anakin has been lying on out from under his body and loops it around his shoulders, resting his palm on Anakin’s back. “I’m not sure how we could get any closer than we currently are.”
There are so many—too many—things that Anakin wants to say to that. They gather behind his teeth, pressing against his mouth. Years and years of things that Anakin has thought, screamed in his head, almost said aloud.
He wants to crawl inside Obi-Wan’s chest, wind around his thoughts and live in the back of his mind. Anakin misses the bond that arched between them like he misses an actual person, someone lost to his past life. He’s always, always wanted to be closer.
And here, in this universe, where he’s never defiled or betrayed anyone, he gets closer still.
Rolling completely on top of Obi-Wan, he balances on his elbow and hovers over him. Looking down into his clear blue-grey eyes, at the sparkling gleam of sweat across his hairline, at the freckles across his nose and cheeks, and the dangling, finely woven padawan braid looped around itself on the training room floor.
“I stand corrected,” Obi-Wan says, prim sounding even though his voice comes out breathless. Anakin can feel the vibrations of his words from where they’re flush against each other, from chest to knees.
He must expect Anakin to banter back, to say something like "We're not even standing." But he doesn't. He can't.
“I still—I want—closer,” Anakin stumbles over his words, his brain tripping over thirty different things. “Obi-Wan.”
It comes out like a plea.
And exactly like Anakin wants, like he needs, it’s a plea Obi-Wan answers.
Like opposite ends of a magnet, he leans up when Anakin darts down, frantic, and their mouths meet. Catch, slide together. It’s soft and warm and everything he has ever, ever wanted, across all of his lifetimes. Underneath him, Obi-Wan sighs, reels him closer. The hand against his back slides up until both are wound in his hair.
Anakin wants to cry. He wants to spill out all of his thoughts, apologies, worries, fears into Obi-Wan’s mouth. Instead, he licks across the seam of Obi-Wan’s lips and takes immediate advantage of the soft moan, slipping his tongue inside.
They’re both too hot, sweaty and tired and worn out from sparring for hours to be this close, but Anakin will die, will have to be dragged away and killed, before he moves away from Obi-Wan now.
Obi-Wan is handsy, grabbing at Anakin’s hair, his robes, his hips, his shoulders. He makes tiny, sweet noises when Anakin pulls away from his mouth and drops kisses all over his face, smearing his lips against any bit of Obi-Wan he can reach.
After dragging his tongue up Obi-Wan’s throat, down the sensitive spot behind his ear, across his jawline, Obi-Wan pulls him back to his mouth, attempting to lick the backs of his teeth.
It’s too much. It’s everything and nothing, and all the bits in between. Anakin is surely sending every single thought and feeling he’s ever had out into the Force, his signature rubbing against Obi-Wan’s.
Slipping his thigh in between Obi-Wan’s legs, Anakin slants his mouth over his, kissing him deeper.
“Did we do this,” Obi-Wan gasps out, rocking his hips up, “before?”
“No,” Anakin breathes, barely audible. “No, but stars, I fucking wish we did.”
“We should have,” Obi-Wan slurs, nonsensical, as Anakin layers wet, open mouthed kisses against the slope of his neck. “I would’ve liked it.”
“Wanted to,” he says, almost completely detached from all rational thought. “Some part of me always did.”
He bites down where neck meets shoulder and Obi-Wan keens, scrabbling against the knee Anakin’s got between his thighs for balance.
It’s not like Anakin didn’t think about it, when he was a hormonal teenager sharing quarters with the most handsome man he knew. When he was old enough to recognize the taper of Obi-Wan’s waist, the breadth of his hands. The heat of his touch. The shine of his hair and the warmth of his eyes.
Then, and later, when they spent some of the worst moments of their lives in tiny tents next to each other, drawing from their illicit, lingering bond to keep the terror at bay.
Even after, when Obi-Wan was Tatooine haggard, face lined. In tunics that were so far removed from the cream color palette he preferred at the Temple. When Anakin hated him so much it served for kindling to the fire in his soul. That rage tethering him to the world of the living.
He has always wanted to touch Obi-Wan, to be touched by him. To love and be loved in return. In every way.
And now, he is. Anakin is loved in this way, in addition to all the others. He can feel it in the tentative curl of Obi-Wan’s Force signature, the love and the desire and the all consuming need.
Unconcerned of where they are, the training salles absolutely not private, Obi-Wan moans, high pitched and reedy, and wraps his leg around the back of Anakin’s thigh for better leverage.
“I haven’t, I’ve never—” he mumbles, embarrassment turning the Force between them prickly and hot.
And karking stars above, if that doesn’t twist and grip at all of the dark, possessive things that still live inside Anakin. In his life, in his past life, he and Obi-Wan were first for many things for each other, but never this. Never, ever this.
But here, in the new life the Force granted him, to fix all the things he helped break, he can give this to Obi-Wan.
Leaning forward to give Obi-Wan better leverage, he presses his thigh down against the hot, hard length of him underneath their sweaty training clothes.
“S’okay, I’ve got you,” he says, so achingly truthful.
And he does. Anakin does.
He gathers Obi-Wan—so sweet and young and only half-smoothed and shaped into the man Anakin knew and loved and hated—into his arms and grips him tightly as he falls apart, grinding himself to completion on the firm muscle of Anakin’s thigh.
When he comes, Obi-Wan sighs so softly against Anakin’s mouth, almost a mewl, that it takes only a few forceful rocks of his own hips against Obi-Wan’s to have him coming in his pants like a fucking teenager too.
It’s mortifying, undoubtedly, but also so pleasing and satisfying and everything Anakin has ever wanted in his ridiculous, cursed existence that he doesn’t even care when they’re wet and sticky and sweaty afterwards, lying slumped across each other on the open training room floor.
He cares even less when Obi-Wan—cheeks pink, mouth swollen, tunics askew—pulls him up to standing and kisses him right on the mouth, firm and meaningful.
They hold hands as they sneak back to Qui-Gon’s quarters, Obi-Wan’s fingers weaved between his.
*
He falls asleep in Obi-Wan’s bed that night, after they rinse off together post-spar. Obi-Wan is pink and shy the entire time, trying to bend his body out of Anakin’s sight. Out of his grasp.
He fails on both counts.
Anakin gets him off again in the ‘fresher. Goes down to his knees and takes Obi-Wan into the back of his throat, makes him scrabble against the slick tile and whine with it. It’s so easy to wring pleasure from him, absolutely addicting.
He has to count to thirty in Aurebesh, Huttese, and Binary when afterwards, Obi-Wan goes to his own knees. He’s eager and inexperienced, but dedicated. And a quick fucking study.
After, they ignore Qui-Gon puttering around in his own room and twine themselves around each other in the tiny padawan bed in Obi-Wan’s. A room that Anakin slept in for a decade, staring at the ceiling and thinking an entire myraid of thoughts.
Falling asleep is easy. The easiest it’s ever been. Obi-Wan warm everywhere they touch, an arm looped around Anakin’s waist, his face pressed directly into Anakin’s neck.
He breathes around all of the love and fear and hope in his heart, presses a kiss to Obi-Wan’s tickly hair, and follows him into sleep.
When he wakes up first the next morning, Obi-Wan is exactly where he fell asleep, so close to Anakin it feels like they’re one person.
The morning light on Coruscant is yellow and warm, watery brightness spilling in from Obi-Wan’s half closed curtains. The Force doesn’t feel as dark here, not yet. There’s still time.
Anakin breathes. He runs his fingers up Obi-Wan’s back. Thinks about what he has done and what there is still left to do.
The Force hums when Obi-Wan wakes up, Anakin able to pinpoint the exact moment that nebulous feelings and bits and pieces of dreams crystalize and clear into coherent thought.
Obi-Wan sighs, content. Then shuffles even further forward to lay a tiny, sweet little kiss against the side of Anakin’s neck.
“Mornin’,” he mumbles, splaying a hand across Obi-Wan’s back.
A muttered, muffled “Good morning.” is what he assumes he gets back, but he can’t hear it from where Obi-Wan is still tangled around him.
When he pulls back, he’s smiling. Sleep warm and ruffled, Obi-Wan exits unconsciousness, gently kisses Anakin, and smiles. It’s enough to make Anakin want to weep.
His filter, already decimated by everything he’s been through on top of having the bare minimum of one his entire life, is transparisteel thin. Anakin says, without thinking about it, into the quiet of the room, “I never want to be without you again.”
The words are too big. The sentiment too much. He knows this. He’s been here, in this universe, with no sign of returning to his own, for not even a full standard year. There’s no way that Obi-Wan can feel anything even close to what Anakin feels, not with so little time. The unfettered, full breadth of Anakin’s emotions will turn Obi-Wan away if he isn’t careful.
“You won’t be,” Obi-Wan says in return. Like a promise. Like an oath.
And, between one breath and another, that half-broken bond in the back of Anakin’s mind comes back to life.
It feels like the pop of dropping out of hyperspace, like the sunlight on Naboo. A sudden shift, an all encompassing glow. It wraps around him with a warmth so suffusive and protective that it reminds him of being in his mother’s arms.
The feeling of something on the other end, of Obi-Wan holding the other side of the string, makes tears well up and spill down Anakin’s face. How right it is feels overwhelming, something missing fitting back into place after so long.
The bond, complete and whole and so happy to exist again, thrums with the warmth and love and delight that they feel for each other.
Obi-Wan’s eyes have gone big, huge and reflective in the morning light. Again, he’s looking at Anakin like he can see inside of him. And now he probably can.
“Is that—?”
“Yes,” Anakin answers immediately, suddenly paralyzed with the thought that this is not what Obi-Wan wants. Nothing like what he signed up for, when he felt Anakin in the Force on a planet whose name he still doesn’t know all those months ago. He didn’t ask for this, didn’t want it. Didn’t know Anakin even existed until he walked up to them, crying all over himself, sorry for so many things that he could barely talk about.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t—this wasn’t—” Not his intent, not his doing.
Tripping over himself, Anakin tries to explain, as if he has even a fucking inkling as to why the bond snapped back into place now when they’ve been by each other’s sides for months.
“Oh,” Obi-Wan breathes, and it sounds dreamy. Happy.
Down the bond, Obi-Wan wraps up every single thought and feeling he’s had about Anakin since the moment he felt him in the Force almost a standard year ago, his sudden presence on the same planet like a beacon leading him right to Anakin, Qui-Gon trailing at his heels. And he gives it to Anakin.
The fear and the intrigue and the unexplained need for closeness. Desire and agitation and white hot anger. Attraction so thorough it makes him hot, makes him squirm. Admiration and curiosity and a love already so potent, so against the Code, that Obi-Wan can’t quite wrap his fingers arond it.
And once he’s done with that, he shows Anakin how lonely he was before this, even in the Temple. Surrounded by people but never fully belonging. Shipped off to Bandomeer, left on Melida/Daan. Shows him that he was never enough, never living up to the expectations of others and himself.
How he never felt right, not whole.
Until now.
He’s happy, Anakin thinks, delirious. Obi-Wan is happy. Pleased by the bond strung between them now, glowing and illuminated and everything.
Anakin has so much to do and apologize for, so much that still hurts and makes him so angry he doesn’t think he will ever be calm.
So many mistakes in all of his lives.
But this isn’t one.
He leans forward, cups Obi-Wan’s beloved face in his hands, kisses his mouth.
And exhales.