I’d Trade All My Tomorrows

by FactumFieriInfectumNonPotest

Summary:

Anakin Skywalker was never the perfect Jedi, but he tried to hold the darkness at bay, to protect those he loved. On the edge of despair, is offered an impossible bargain: trade the unknown future for one without loss, without goodbyes he was not yet ready for.

Kylo Ren, née Ben Organa-Solo, grew up with only the darkness as his constant companion. Then he fell in love, a deep soul searing tragic kind of love. A love worth unmaking himself, if it meant giving it one last chance to survive.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, long disciplined in denying his heart, swore to surrender his feelings to the Force. Now he will claim them instead, nurturing it with everything he is, defying every vow to see it live.

Armitage Hux built his future on lies, never knowing the cost. Now, haunted by the memory of a man he betrayed, he seizes a single, final chance to atone—to undo the unspeakable sins he once committed.

On the edge of galactic war, four men, driven by love and bound by darkness, embark on a path to change their destinies.

Notes:

I have not written anything in a long long long time. Please bear with me. All the mistakes are mine. But if I have to suffer this story, I need to get it out into the world. Please note that I've taken a lot of creative liberties, and please be kind to me if possible. Thank you and I hope you enjoy.

Title is from: Just One Yesterday by Fall Out Boy and I’d Trade All of My Tomorrows (For Just One Yesterday) by Willie Nelson.

Chapter 1

Anakin Skywalker felt the force slip away, vanishing like water into the parched sand, leaving her body cold and lifeless as her presence dissolved among the sands of Tatooine. The fragile strings that held together Padawan Anakin Skywalker snapped as he cradled her body to his chest. Gone was the bright-eyed padawan, full of hope for the future and all that remained was broken and scared little Ani. Little Ani who missed his mother dearly as he departed Tatooine with Qui-Gon Jinn, little Ani who missed his mother’s hugs, little Ani who missed his mother’s stories. Little Ani begged the force, any gods, any power beyond himself, to give her back. 

But the Force offered only silence. No divine favor turned his way. The current he had trusted all his life flowed on, deaf to his anguish, as pain and indignation consumed him. The force was silent as he set his mother back down and turned on his light saber. The force was silent as he cleared the settlement of any other lifeform with his saber. The strings that once suspended dutiful Padawan Anakin Skywalker had felt like iron chains — and now, at last, they lay broken at his feet. He felt unshackled from his Jedi vows, freed from the suffocating strictures that barred him from seeing his mother, and foremost he was free from the crushing mantle of being the Chosen One.

Anakin stood amidst the aftermath, exhausted, but there was no remorse, no guilt. Only a hollow, echoing emptiness that would become his new existence. He powered down his saber and strode past the carnage he wrought, no longer able to bring himself to care. The sands would take it all - his rage, his brokenness, the carnage, - like offerings placed upon an alter. It would swallow everything that he gave, taking and taking until only sand remained.  

Anakin made his way back to the hovel where his mother’s body laid. The woman who loved him unconditionally would never smile at him again. Would never hold him to sleep as she told him stories, would never guide his small hands through tangled wires, would never– Anakin would never see his mother again. He would bury his mother amongst the sand, and along with his mother, he would bury little Ani. The child who still missed his mother, would join his mother once more beneath the suns of Tatooine. Anakin would bury them both in the sands in the morning, but for just a little longer, just until the first sunrise, he would be little Ani one last time. 

The tears blinded him as he sank to his knees before his mother. Anakin felt the sobs over take him as he lost himself to the emotions that overwhelmed him. He was so lost in his anger that he initially missed the person standing next to him. Anakin grabbed for his lightsaber, planning to finish off the intruder. However, his hand paused as the stranger lifted the veil upon their head and spoke. 

“Hello, Anakin Skywalker.”

—

During the battle of Geonosis, Obi-Wan had been certain that he would die, or rather, there were multiple times during the day when death should have claimed him. It had been one shit show after another and now Anakin was in medical, minus one arm and suspended in a bacta tank. By all rights, Obi-Wan should be furious at Anakin, at the sheer stupidity of his padawan. Sith’s hell, Anakin had brought an active senator with him to rescue Obi-Wan . The dressing down that Anakin was to receive upon waking up would be one to remember, Obi-Wan was going to make sure of it. Yet, beneath the veneer of irritation, a fragile ember of pride smolder. Anakin had defied the impossible, yet again. 

Obi-Wan exhaled slowly, forcing his shoulders to loosen as his gaze lingered on the younger man’s form floating serenely in the healing fluid. He had just recently been pulled from his own, Dooku had left him with his own scars to remember Geonosis by. He’d been cleared to leave the Halls of Healing, though Vokara Che had sternly ordered light duty and endless physical therapy until further notice. Not that Obi-Wan believed the galaxy would wait for his recovery. The Republic Senate stood poised on the precipice of war, and every Jedi had been recalled to Coruscant.

The council was currently convening and trying to understand Dooku’s ominous meanings along with the sheer number of clone troopers that had suddenly become part of the Jedi's assets. The chancellor had also put in a request to meet with the Jedi council to go over the roles the Jedi would play in this upcoming war. 

War. 

Sith’s hell, the Jedi were going to war. 

So much for being peacekeepers. 

Obi-Wan craved the numbing comfort of a good drink, but he would have to settle for meditation. Perhaps now that all the Jedi were being recalled, Quinlan would be amenable to one last night of indulgence and bad decisions before they were sent off to war. Obi-Wan made a slight change to his route and decided to make a pit stop in the Room of a Thousand Fountains for the much needed meditation. 

—

The journey to the Room of a Thousand Fountains took longer than Obi-Wan would be comfortable admitting. He was grateful that the younglings had been relocated to a safer and more secure location in the temple, giving him reprieve from having anyone see him in his disheveled state. By the time he found himself pleasantly settled by a particularly bigger fountain, one that Anakin had been so fond of when he first came to the temple, exhaustion tugged at every step. 

Somedays Obi-Wan longed to return to those simpler days, when Anakin’s wonder was ignited by the simple marvels of water cascading in arcs. When Obi-Wan’s days were consumed by chasing after his impetuous Padawan and dragging him to his lessons on time. Now, everything was about to irrevocably change, and the ache in his muscle mirrored the ache in his heart. 

Perhaps coming here had been a bad decision, but he needed to meditate, and Obi-Wan could not bring himself to meditate in his shared room with Anakin. He had not been able to meditate in their shared space for a few years now. Anakin’s presence in the force was so full of light and all consuming, and it saturated every corner of Obi-Wan’s being. It was… a distraction that refused to allow Obi-Wan to do anything but look at it. Master Qui-Gon had endeavored to teach Obi-Wan to peer within himself through meditation, to deepen his connection to the Force. Master Qui-Gon had always been better at connecting to the force, he had made meditation seem effortless, a grace Obi-Wan had always struggled to emulate. Before Anakin, Obi-Wan used his meditation time to center himself, find a moment of calm before returning to his lessons, his duties, and his vow to the Jedi code.

After Anakin, meditation was a battlefield, a contest of wills with himself as he resisted surrendering to the comforting blaze of Anakin’s force presence. More than once, Obi-Wan had found himself surrendering to the light as it radiated from his padawan, using it as a crutch to stave off his own darkness, and letting Anakin’s light burn away all the tendrils of darkness that threaten to bloom from within Obi-Wan.  

He found himself currently slipping into the warm presence of Anakin through their bond, feeling himself settling against Anakin’s own mind. The automatic embrace that was Anakin settled in Obi-Wan’s own mind. A silent comfort that Obi-Wan had grown used to, no, in his own mind he could admit to himself that Obi-Wan had grown attached to this bond. An attachment he both cherished and worshiped. He could admit that he looked forward to the warmth and comfort that it brought him. 

Obi-Wan did not know how long he stayed like this, content and warm, side by side with Anakin, but he knew how it ended. 

Obi-Wan clutched his hand over his chest, the fabric of his clothes pressing against his heart, as though he could hold the pain in. His other hand gripped the grass beneath him, ground himself, though nothing could steady the inferno that had risen within him. His breaths came in shallow, ragged gasps as a searing pain shot through the bond and he was forced to retreat from Anakin’s embrace. 

The bright, golden bond between began to shift, its hue flickering and warping into an intense blue. An intense supernova of heat began surging though the bond-consuming, pulling, twisting-before he felt it shattered with a final, violent snap. 

The warmth was gone, the embrace that had always felt like a constant was suddenly and painfully absent.  

Obi-Wan closed his eyes as he gasped in agony, he had survived having a bond forcibly broken before, but this… this was nothing like losing Master Qui-Gon. It did not separate slowly and fade like it did with his master, unraveling slowly like threads coming undone. The pain had been momentary before becoming a dull ache, a fading warmth that pulled at him, but this-this felt like taking a light saber through the heart. A deep wound- unbearable, raw, and irrevocable. The plasma burned and cauterized the bond, leaving Obi-Wan drifting in the force. He couldn’t do anything to stop it from happening, no chance to prepare, and by the time he realized what was happening, it was already over. 

In the sudden silence, Obi-Wan reached desperately into the force, trying to find something, anything- Anakin. But it was as if the force itself had abandoned him, cast him adrift upon merciless tides. Within the vast emptiness, Obi-Wan could feel nothing, not even himself. 

Then, cold metal pressed against his forehead.

“Who the kriff are you?”

Chapter 2

Armitage Brendol Hux despised the Force. It was an unpredictable variable he couldn't account for in any simulation—impossible to predict, impossible to control without many long hours of training that Hux neither possessed nor desired. IOccasionally, it favored him, but more often, it turned on him when he least expected it. Like now. It had dragged him to the heart of this blasted Jedi temple, with its high walls and sanctimonious ideals. His mind was being prodded by the Jedi before him—polite, professional, but no less invasive. They were trying not to be too intrusive, but it didn't make it any easier to stand before them.

Hux stood in what he assumed was some sort of conference room, though it hardly resembled any military briefing space he was familiar with. The space was circular, with panoramic windows forming the bulk of the perimeter. Twelve chairs were facing towards the center, letting their backs to the glass. Hux could vividly picture a sniper easily taking out any of the sentients currently sitting in the chairs. Although he supposed, he reminded himself, this was the Jedi Council room. Attempting an assassination here would end in disaster, if only because these Jedi seemed too attuned to the Force to be caught unaware. Still, the impracticality of the space irked him. One solitary entrance to the room, no other ways exits—

The voice of a Cerean male, Ki-Adi-Mundi, Hux’s brain supplied, interrupted his thoughts. “Obi-Wan, we understand your concerns about your missing padawan, but what I’m trying to figure out is where Armitage plays into all of this?”

Hux’s teeth ground together at the sound of his first name. He hated it, loathed it, as though someone were scraping metal against his skull. He had sent people to reconditioning for daring to print his full name on forms. But he had his reasons for being here. Ren . That foolish, stubborn, emotional disaster of a person. He had to find Ren, had to find him and explain…apologize, beg, and if necessary, grovel before his very being. Tell Ren that he was more than a fleeting companion, more than a distraction he hadn’t wanted but couldn’t quite shake. Hux wanted to take back all the cruel words he had said to hurt Ren back on Starkiller. Words that he couldn't unsay. 

Kenobi’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Master Mundi, as Mister Hux has explained, was brought here because of the Force. Perhaps his insight might be helpful in locating Anakin... and in the upcoming battle.”

“Believe that Hux was brought by the force I do, know but why, I do not.” The green goblin, Master Yoda, Hux believed him to be, spoke, “Hrrmmm. Perhaps only time will tell. Until the force shall tell us why, your ward he shall be.”

“Master Yoda, I need to find Anakin, I can't look after Hux too.” Kenobi protested, his patience wearing thin. 

“A time limit there will be,” Yoda’s words hung heavy in the air. “Stop just because of your missing padawan war does not. You will return when we call, but until then, your missing padawan permission to find, we shall grant. Will also be your responsibility, Hux is…”

There was a flash of something—an undercurrent of hesitation? Fear?—but Kenobi quickly steeled himself before nodding and bowing before the council. He turned to leave, but not before directing Hux with his eyes to follow. Hux fell into step with Kenobi as they left the council room, dreadfully designed as it was, and into the hallways of the temple. 

An uneasy silence settled between them as they walked, a silence that only grew heavier the longer Hux followed. The temple’s corridors stretched on, eerily quiet, the faint echo of their footsteps mingling with the soft hum of distant conversations. Hux allowed himself a moment to take in the temple and all its offerings; he had visited the temple once when he had just graduated from the Academy. Although at the time, it had already been converted into a palace before being abandoned once the Emperor had been slain. The exterior had been an intimidating monstrosity, and he remembered the way Ren—back when he was still going by Ben Organa-Solo, eager to impress the younger Hux—had offered to give him a tour.

The second time he’d been inside the temple, however, had been a very different story. He’d been too distracted by the prospect of not being killed by the Knights of Ren, who had been sent to eliminate Kylo, to actually take in any of the surroundings.

Now, as he walked inside the very temple that currently housed the Jedi of the Republic, Hux found himself put off by something. It wasn’t just the decor—there was a feeling here, something deep within the Force that Hux couldn’t place, but it gnawed at him nonetheless. A disturbance, Ren would have called it, had he been here. But Hux wasn’t ready to admit how much he missed hearing Ren’s voice, even if that voice had often been filled with bitterness when they last parted. There was something here, something in the temple that rubbed him the wrong way, something that put him on edge. 

The walk was blessedly fast as they entered Kenobi’s chamber and where Hux’s “luggage” was stored. It was enough of a distraction from the odd feeling that Hux could ignore the disturbance for now. He needed to deal with Kenobi. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Master to Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader and Kylo Ren’s grandfather. Where every Anakin had disappeared to, Kylo would follow, his obsession with Vader knew no bounds. 

–

Obi-Wan busied himself with preparing tea, the familiar task grounding him as he tried to make sense of the last few hours of his life. His muscles moved on instinct, a comfort compared to the chaos swirling in his mind. The bond with Anakin, once a vibrant, ever-present connection, was now a fractured echo—silent but still agonizing. It was like an open wound that wouldn’t heal, raw and painful, gnawing at him. After Hux had escorted him to the Halls of Healing, Vokara Che had insisted he remain for further observation. There was damage, she’d said, that needed attention. Obi-Wan had refused outright.

It had taken all of Obi-Wan’s Jedi training to remain upright when he learned that Anakin had disappeared from under the watch of three healers. No one, not even Vokara Che, had been able to explain what happened. One moment, Anakin had been immersed in his bacta tank, healing from his injuries; the next, his presence had evaporated, as if consumed by the Force. 

Yet, Obi-Wan refused to believe he was truly gone. Deep in his heart, he knew Anakin was still out there, somewhere. Alive. Waiting for him to find him. He had to. He couldn’t give up on him—not now, not ever.

But first, Hux, the supposed time traveler, force sensitive not jedi, whose shields would rival even those of his own. Obi-Wan glanced over at him now, seated across the room with an air of cold composure. Hux sat as though the very room was his to command, his sharp gaze sweeping over the space, cataloging every corner. Obi-Wan noted the strategic placement of the man on the couch, positioned in such a way that he could watch every door, every exit, and Obi-Wan’s own movements. His mind was as sharp as his posture, poised and dangerous. If Hux had been trained, he would’ve made a formidable Jedi. The way he masked his thoughts with such precision was almost Jedi-like. Almost.

And yet, Obi-Wan knew Hux was hiding something. He’d been evasive with the council, withholding vital information, and Obi-Wan would not allow that to stand. He needed to understand Hux's role in all of this, the truth of why he was here.

The sound of the kettle whistling broke his thoughts, pulling him back to the present. He moved with practiced ease to pour the tea, then sat himself opposite Hux. The space between them felt heavy, almost tangible. It wasn’t just the silence. It was the unspoken words, the layers of tension that filled the air.

Obi-Wan settled, the man’s presence an undeniable force. There was no getting around it now. They needed to talk. They had no choice. Obi-Wan took a measured sip of tea, his eyes narrowing slightly as he faced Hux.

“You’ve been quite vague with the council,” Obi-Wan said softly, his tone calm but tinged with an edge of urgency. “I need to understand why you’re here, Hux. More than that, I need to know who Kylo Ren is and why you’re so determined to find him.”

Obi-Wan leaned back slightly on the couch, the steaming cup of tea held loosely between his fingers. The silence in the room was thick with unsaid words, and he could feel the weight of Hux’s gaze on him. For all the man’s calculated coldness, Obi-Wan could sense a deeper storm underneath, one Hux was struggling to keep buried.

Hux, for his part, took a sip from his own cup but made no move to speak. His eyes stayed fixed on Obi-Wan, not with the familiar weight of judgment the Jedi had grown accustomed to, but with a more dangerous, guarded intensity.

"I won't pretend I understand everything that's happened," Obi-Wan began, his voice even but firm. "I know you're from the future—or you claim to be. You arrived here, apparently to find a man named Kylo Ren." He leaned forward slightly, his gaze never leaving Hux's. "But you haven't told me the whole truth, and you’ve made it clear that you’re not interested in being fully transparent with the council."

Hux’s lip twitched, a tiny, imperceptible flicker of emotion that vanished as quickly as it appeared. He leaned back against the couch, his posture relaxed, but Obi-Wan could feel the tension radiating off him, like a coiled spring ready to snap.

"You're... insistent," Hux remarked, his voice low, tinged with something Obi-Wan couldn’t quite place. "And you’re right. I haven’t told you everything. But, Kenobi, I am not here to explain myself. Not to you or your council."

Obi-Wan’s brow furrowed slightly, the calm mask he wore slipping for a fraction of a moment. "Then why are you here, Hux? Why is Kylo Ren so important that you would risk your life for him?"

Hux set his cup down, the delicate porcelain making no sound as it touched the table. He regarded Obi-Wan silently for a moment before answering. His eyes flickered with something unreadable—sorrow? Remorse? 

“I’m here because the force brought me here," Hux said, his tone tinged with a mix of bitterness and resignation. "The force… I won’t pretend that I can even begin to understand anything about it. But Ren used it, used it in a way that should not have been possible.” Hux paused, his eyes narrowing. "But yet, even as a bystander, it still brought me here.”

Obi-Wan’s gaze sharpened. "Kylo Ren. You keep mentioning him, but you say nothing of who he truly is to you. Your silence about him, Hux, it speaks volumes. If he’s so important to your story, then I need to understand the truth. All of it."

Hux’s lips pressed into a thin line, his expression unreadable. For a long moment, it seemed as though he would say nothing more. But then, as if reluctantly, he spoke.

"Ren is someone… complicated," Hux said slowly, his voice laced with something Obi-Wan couldn’t quite identify. "He’s my… he’s the reason I’m here." He met Obi-Wan’s gaze, his eyes cold and distant. "But you’re right to question me. The answers aren’t simple. You wouldn’t understand even if I told you."

Obi-Wan’s eyes narrowed. "Try me."

Hux gave a bitter laugh, a sound full of irony. "Are all Jedi like you Kenobi, so sure of yourselves? You think you know everything, that there’s always a path, a solution, a way to fix it. But sometimes... sometimes there’s no way out. Sometimes the damage is done."

Obi-Wan's gaze softened, a flicker of empathy breaking through the steely resolve in his eyes. He had seen the kind of pain Hux was talking about—the kind that festered, the kind that clouded judgment and fractured souls. 

"Damage can be healed," Obi-Wan replied quietly, his voice unwavering. "It might not be easy. But the Force always provides a way forward, Hux. Even when we don't see it."

Hux stiffened at the words, and for a moment, Obi-Wan saw something else—something flickering in Hux’s eyes. Hope? It was gone too quickly for Obi-Wan to be certain, but it made him wonder.

“What if the damage was too much? What if there is no fixing this?” Hux murmured, almost to himself.

Obi-Wan didn’t immediately respond, giving Hux the space to finish his thought. He had the feeling that, despite Hux’s tough exterior, there was a great deal of hurt hiding beneath. 

"I’m not asking for absolution, Kenobi," Hux finally continued, his voice more strained now. "Least of all from a Jedi like you. I know your story Kenobi and how it ends. But I need you to understand one thing—Ren is important to me. I would see the galaxy burn if it meant that I could have him here with me again.”

Obi-Wan’s breath caught in his throat as Hux's words settled over him like a weight. He hadn’t expected such a raw admission, not from the man who had been so guarded, so composed. But now, the words hung between them—dark, heavy, and laden with a desperation that Obi-Wan couldn’t ignore. Hux wasn’t just talking about someone he wanted to find; he was talking about someone he needed to find. And Obi-Wan understood that kind of need. He’d felt it now as it mirrored his own desperation to find his padawan. For the first time since their meeting, Obi-Wan saw Hux as something more than a cold, strategic figure.

The man in front of him was torn, broken in a way Obi-Wan hadn’t anticipated.

"Kylo Ren is… someone important to you," Obi-Wan said slowly, his voice soft but firm, his gaze never leaving Hux. "And Anakin Skywalker is important to me. So I will help you Hux, but only after I have found Anakin Skywalker.”

Hux’s gaze dropped to the cup in his hands, the fingers tightening around the porcelain as though trying to keep himself together. He exhaled sharply, a bitter sound escaping his lips before he looked back at Obi-Wan. This time, the wall was completely gone, and Obi-Wan saw the depth of the turmoil in his eyes.

Hux stared at him for a long moment, a wariness in his eyes. Then, as if he had come to some unspoken conclusion, he nodded slowly.

"Fine," he said, his voice resigned. "Although, wherever Anakin Skywalker may have disappeared to, Ren will not be too far behind.”

Hux's agreement to cooperate felt like a truce born out of necessity rather than trust, but it was a start. Still, it was something. Both men now understood the stakes—the weight of what the other stood to lose—though neither was ready to confront the full extent of it. But Obi-Wan knew the war would not wait for either of them. The council had granted him permission, but his time was a ticking clock that could very well expire tomorrow. Every precious moment counted, and he intended to make the most of the time he had left.

Notes:

All the mistakes are my own. Some times I feel like I'm just rambling.

Chapter 3

The shuttle’s low hum filled the otherwise empty cockpit, a steady and almost soothing drone that Obi-Wan had grown accustomed to over the years. It was the same sound he had heard on countless missions—an ever-present companion that never wavered. Obi-Wan sat at the controls, trying to focus on the task at hand, but the Force was clouded. His connection to it was thinning with each passing moment, deteriorating faster each time he tried to feel the force. Vokara Che had been right. The bond with Anakin—now severed—had taken a far greater toll on him than he had realized. What he thought had been an invisible thread had, in truth, been structural, woven into the very foundation of his being. Losing it had shaken him in ways he hadn’t anticipated, and now, each time he tried to feel the Force, it felt like he was trying to hold onto smoke slipping through his fingers.

Obi-Wan had always prided himself on his self-discipline, on his ability to weather any storm, no matter how personal the toll. But the truth was undeniable now. The strength he once drew from the Force was faltering. It wasn’t just the loss of Anakin that hurt—it was the crushing realization of how much that bond had been a part of him, a constant presence that shaped his every thought, every action, every decision.

Obi-Wan closed his eyes, as he tried again to reach out to the Force once more, the absence was a tangible thing, like an invisible hand pressing against his chest. His breath caught in his throat as the void met him, the cold emptiness swallowing him whole. He tried again, reaching deeper, his fingers tightening against the control panel as if that might anchor him.

Nothing.

Obi-Wan’s chest tightened, his body reacting to the growing sense of disconnection. Cold sweat began to form along his brow as panic, a sensation he hadn’t felt in years, crept in. The tremors started in his hands, and he fought to steady himself, but it was no use. His strength was fading, slipping away as if he were no longer tethered to his own body. For a fleeting moment, he thought he might pass out—he could feel the world spinning around him, could hear the rushing of blood in his ears.

Then, just like that, the ground gave way.

His mind spun, a whirl of lights and dark, a crushing weight descending on him until everything went black.

—

When Obi-Wan awoke, he found himself flat on the cold floor of the shuttle. His head throbbed, a dull, persistent ache that felt like the remnants of a storm. His body felt foreign to him, too heavy, too weak—like someone else’s vessel entirely. For a moment, he couldn’t quite recall what had happened, only that the world had spun out of control, and now here he was, struggling to remember how to simply breathe. But then the sharpness of Hux’s voice cut through the haze.

“Kenobi,” Hux’s tone was pointed, almost clinical. “This is not a position I ever expected to find you in. Are you quite finished with this little display of… weakness?”

Obi-Wan blinked, his vision swimming as he tried to push himself to his feet. The action felt like a Herculean effort. He was embarrassingly disoriented, as though his body had forgotten how to function. His hand flailed for support, brushing against the cool metal of the shuttle floor, and finally, he felt Hux’s firm grip on his arm, pulling him upright with an almost casual efficiency.

Obi-Wan gritted his teeth, trying to steady himself, but the tremor in his limbs betrayed him. His stomach churned, a hollow sensation creeping over him, and for a moment, he feared he might collapse again. 

“Thank you,” he muttered, his voice hoarse and unfamiliar. The words felt almost too difficult to force out, like a confession of weakness he hadn’t intended to make. He could barely look at Hux, the shame clouding his vision.

“Don’t mention it,” Hux replied with a cold, almost amused edge. “Though, I must admit, I had expected more from someone of your… reputation.” His eyes flicked to Obi-Wan’s face, noting the pallor, the beads of sweat that dotted his brow. "You’ve been projecting your anxiety into the Force. I thought Jedi were supposed to have control."

The words landed like a slap. Obi-Wan’s heart skipped, and for a moment, his embarrassment flared. He hadn’t even realized he had lost that calm, that discipline, that mastery over himself that had always been his greatest strength. The loss of Anakin’s bond had not only left a void in his heart but in his very soul. His connection to the Force itself had been battered, and now his own emotions—his fear, his uncertainty—were leaking into it, affecting everything around him. And Hux, of all people, had noticed. He, with his minimal training in the Force, had sensed it. Obi-Wan had allowed the cracks to show, allowed his fear and uncertainty to leak into everything around him.

His gaze flickered toward Hux, trying to hide his shame. “I wasn’t aware I was projecting that much.”

Hux’s gaze was piercing, his lips curling into a dry, almost mocking smile. “No, you weren’t.” His voice held a note of scorn. “But that’s beside the point. I expected this kind of mistake from someone like Ren, but from you?” He shook his head slightly. “A Jedi Master. I must say I’m underwhelmed.”

Obi-Wan flinched, unable to hide the sting of Hux’s words. His cheeks flushed with the intensity of his embarrassment. He had been in control of himself, of the Force, for so long. But now, with Anakin’s absence weighing so heavily on him, that control was slipping, unraveling.

“I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that, eventually, I will become a Jedi Master,” Obi-Wan said, summoning a brittle humor to cover the wound. “Hopefully future-me will prove less disappointing.”

Hux’s response was a noncommittal “Hmm,” his eyes narrowing as he returned his gaze to the stars streaking past the viewport.

Obi-Wan turned away as well, watching the distant stars with a growing sense of helplessness and tried to compose himself. He didn’t have the luxury to analyze how badly he had faltered. There was no time. Anakin had vanished into the ether, and the weight of that loss was dragging him down further than he was willing to admit.

“We don’t have time to dwell on this,” Obi-Wan said after a beat, his voice resolute despite the uncertainty still curling in his chest. “We’re headed to Naboo. Padmé Amidala might know something. She’s one of the few people left who could possibly shed light on Anakin.”

Hux gave a small, skeptical glance but said nothing. Obi-Wan could tell that he was still observing, still calculating. He could see that Hux knew more than he let on, but was unwilling to share with Obi-Wan. Whatever Hux knew about the future must have included Padmé. However, asking Hux for more information felt like opening a door Obi-Wan wasn’t sure he wanted to walk through.

The silence stretched between them, heavy with the unspoken acknowledgment of Obi-Wan’s weaknesses, and yet they both understood—there was no time to address them. Obi-Wan shook his head, the dizziness starting to subside, but the exhaustion remained. He had to put his personal turmoil aside. The galaxy was on the verge of war. Anakin was out there somewhere, lost, and Obi-Wan needed to find him before the council called him back to Coruscant. 

As the shuttle made its way toward Naboo, Obi-Wan’s thoughts continued to swirl. Hux was quiet now, watching the stars through the viewport with his usual detached air. But Obi-Wan could sense something else in him—an understanding, perhaps, or a recognition of the weight that pressed upon both of them.

Obi-Wan knew he didn’t have the luxury of time. He could feel the Force growing more distant, more fragmented with every passing minute. He had no idea how long it would be before the connection vanished entirely. But there was no time to investigate the extent of his own weakness. He had a mission. And he would see it through.

—

Hux stood at the entrance of the modest yet regal estate, his sharp gaze sweeping across the lush Naboo countryside. The landscape was breathtaking, a sea of vibrant greens and soft blues stretching out before him. The trees, their leaves heavy with the weight of recent rain, swayed gently in the breeze. Even the sky above seemed impossibly clear, the clouds a mere whisper on the horizon. The scene before him seemed almost surreal—so pristine, so untouched by the chaos of the galaxy that he almost felt bad about the upcoming destruction it would soon find itself under. It was all so… peaceful. Idyllic, even.

But peace wasn’t what Hux had come for.

His chest tightened as his eyes lingered on the tranquil surroundings. The contrast between the serene landscape and the urgency of their mission couldn’t have been more jarring. He had never been one for sentimentality, and the beauty of Naboo, now felt at odds with the cold reality that had brought him here. This was no diplomatic visit. This was a mission—a desperate one—and the stakes were as high as they came.

The door to the estate opened, revealing a figure who, despite her poised elegance, radiated a quiet strength that immediately caught his attention. Padmé Amidala, neé Padmé Naberrie, had been Kylo Ren’s grandmother. The former queen of Naboo, was not someone who could be easily overlooked. Even now, she carried herself with the same regal grace, her posture upright, her expression serene but sharp.

Her gaze locked with his as she stepped forward, her robes flowing like liquid silk. There was a quiet intensity in her eyes, as though she could sense the gravity of the situation before a word had even been spoken. Hux had been briefed on her history, of course—the former queen turned senator, a woman who had been a force of influence in the Galactic Senate and, more crucially, in Anakin Skywalker's life. Nothing could have prepared Hux for the presence that Padmé exuded in the flesh. There was an elegance to her, yes, but beneath it, a quiet strength—an air of authority that was undeniable. Hux, with all his calculated arrogance, paused for a moment.

As Amidala drew closer, Hux found his gaze fixated on her with an intensity he hadn't expected. He had only ever seen her in the surviving portraits, frozen in time: the official ones that had endured through the war, and the somber senatorial portrait that Leia Organa kept framed in her office. There was something about her presence now, in the flesh, that made him feel oddly unsettled. She was young, almost too young, Hux thought, to fully comprehend the fate that lay ahead of her. In just a few short years, she would be gone—her life snuffed out in the tragic sweep of history. It was a thought that gnawed at him, an awareness that felt foreign but undeniable.

As his eyes studied her more intently, Hux couldn’t help but see traces of Ren in her features, in the way she carried herself with quiet dignity, the same steely resolve that had become a hallmark of her grandson. Would she have loved him? Hux wondered. Would she have fought for him, for the child he once was, before the galaxy broke him?

And yet, there was an unsettling thought that lingered in the back of his mind—what if she had been just another link in the chain of betrayals? What if, had she lived through the war, she would have turned against him, just like his parents had? Would she have abandoned him to the whims of the galaxy, driven by misguided notions of what was "best" for him? Would she have sent him away, just as they had, shoving him off to his uncle as though his own blood wasn’t enough to protect him?

Hux could almost picture it—Amidala, with her idealism, making the same choices as others in her family had: abandoning the ones she loved in the name of some higher cause, in the name of survival, or duty. It was a cold thought, one that tasted bitter even as he imagined it. And yet, it was one he couldn’t shake, no matter how he tried. Or would she have fought for him, as she had fought for so many others, until the very end? The weight of her history, her decisions, and her family's legacy hung heavy in the air, almost suffocating him.

Obi-Wan, standing beside him, cleared his throat gently, breaking the brief silence. "Padmé, this is—"

Before Obi-Wan could finish, Hux cut in, his voice cold yet polite. "Please, just call me Hux, Senator." He gave her a slight, respectful bow, his eyes lingering on her for a moment longer than he intended. There was something magnetic about her presence, something that made him feel, for just a fraction of a second, like he was not in control. It irked him.

Padmé regarded him with a calm, piercing look, her lips curling into a soft smile that was far from welcoming but not unkind. "A friend of Obi-Wan’s, then," she said thoughtfully, her eyes never leaving his. "And someone who’s helping him find Anakin, I presume?"

Hux nodded curtly, but the thought of Anakin lingered in his mind, gnawing at him like a persistent ache. "Yes, that’s correct. Finding him is… urgent."

Padmé’s gaze softened for a moment, her eyes flicking to Obi-Wan as though silently asking if there was more to the story. But she said nothing, merely gesturing toward the open door. "Then perhaps we should finish our conversation inside," she suggested, her voice calm but carrying a weight of authority.

Hux felt a flicker of discomfort, an instinctive resistance to her command. It wasn’t the words, but the way they were spoken—delivered with such quiet certainty that it felt almost like a challenge. Like the universe was reminding him that not all battles were fought with blasters or starships. Some battles were fought in the silence between words, in the force of a presence.

Obi-Wan nodded, stepping toward the door with a slight, apologetic glance toward Hux, as though this moment were part of the intricate dance they were now caught in.

But for Hux, nothing was ever simple. Every gesture, every word, every interaction carried an undercurrent of tension that he couldn’t quite shake. Life for him had always been a series of calculated moves, of reading between lines, of knowing when to push, when to withdraw. But Padmé Amidala—this woman, standing at the heart of this peaceful estate—wasn’t someone who could be easily predicted, and that unsettled him in a way he couldn’t fully articulate.

He had studied her for years, of course, after knowing that she had been Ben’s grandmother. He’d read every report, every piece of intelligence that mentioned her. The former queen of Naboo, the senator who had stood at the heart of galactic politics, wielded influence in ways that few could even begin to comprehend. She had been a force, a woman whose voice had swayed the fates of millions, who had driven entire policies and decisions during the Republic’s twilight years. Her tenacity was legendary. Her resolve was absolute.

Here she was, in person, striding a few paces ahead of him, her brilliance and the quiet strength of her demeanor radiated from within her. Her gaze had been sharp, calculating, like she was already two steps ahead of him in this strange chess game they were playing. She wasn’t easily manipulated, and she certainly wasn’t a woman to be intimidated.

Hux had a reputation for being relentless, for controlling every situation, for making sure the odds always tipped in his favor. In Amidala, he could recognize a formidable opponent, someone who could give him a challenge. His mind flashed with the idea of facing her head-on, of sparring with her—not just intellectually, but politically as well. The prospect of confronting someone with that much inner strength was intoxicating. It would be an exhilarating test of his limits, a challenge that would push him further than anything else had.

Hux had never been afraid of a challenge. In fact, he thrived on it. It was what had propelled him through the ranks of the First Order, what had sharpened his mind into the weapon it was now. And this—this intellectual and emotional chess game with Padmé Amidala—was the kind of challenge that fed his arrogance. She had been a queen, a senator, a mother who had known loss and sacrifice. He was just a man who had carved his path through ruthlessness and ambition. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t enjoy proving, once and for all, that he could stand toe-to-toe with her and come out victorious.

But the thought of it—the duel, the power, the drive—reminded him of something else. Something that gnawed at him, leaving a bitter taste in the back of his throat.

Ren. 

The parallels hit him like a blaster bolt. When he first met Ren—Ben Organa-Solo back then—he had sensed something similar. Strength. An unyielding presence. Something in the boy had triggered something in Hux, a raw energy that mirrored his own. Even back then, when Ren was still Ben Organa-Solo, there was an intensity to him that Hux had recognized, but hadn’t fully understood. And then, when Ren embraced the mantle of Kylo Ren, when he turned to the darkness fully, Hux had only seen the power and the raw strength.

It had been a pity, Hux realized now, that it had taken him so long to understand. Ben Organa-Solo and Kylo Ren were not two separate men. They had always been one—one soul, fierce and fractured, who had reached out to him again and again, even while drowning. He had let his quest for revenge blind him to all that was Kylo, all the Kylo had shown him, all the similarities that tied him to Ben Organa-Solo still. In hindsight, he now saw how much he had missed in his blindness. If he had understood sooner, if he had seen it for what it truly was, would he have acted differently? Would he have held onto Ren? Would he have nurtured that connection instead of pushing it away?

The thought of what could have been—what he might have built with Ren by his side—was a sickening weight that Hux now carried. His arrogance had blinded him. He had let Ren slip through his fingers, like sand through a clenched fist. Hux had thought he was the one in control, the one who could manipulate and guide Ren’s path. But the truth was, Ren had always been the more dangerous of the two, more powerful, more unpredictable. And in his hubris, Hux had underestimated that.

Had he recognized the same strength in Kylo Ren that he now saw in Padmé Amidala? Had he seen the flicker of brilliance in Ren’s defiance, the way he clung to his brokenness, his love for Hux, as if it were his only tether to the world? In some ways, Ren’s journey was far more tragic than Hux’s own. Hux had always been so sure of his cause, sure of his cause, sure of his thirst for vengeance. But Ren? Ren was torn in every direction—between his bloodline and his heart, between impossible expectations and unbearable longing. Hux had mocked that struggle, treated it as weakness, used it as a tool for his vengeance. 

Standing in the presence of Amidala, all he could see was Kylo Ren. In the poise of her chin, in the stillness of her gaze, in the unspoken strength that radiated from her, Hux saw Ren as clearly as if he stood before him now. The resemblance was not of feature but of spirit. That same defiant core. That same gravity that pulled everyone in and refused to let go.

He felt his own guilt deepen, vast and suffocating. Hux saw his own mistakes with painful clarity, saw how he had failed Ren at every turn. He had thought he could break Ren, like he would break anyone. But the truth was, Ren had never been broken. Not in the way Hux had believed. No, Ren was something different—something Hux had failed to comprehend until it was much too late. 

In his arrogance, he had misjudged Ren, too focused on revenge to realize that Ren had loved him in his own way. That Ren had still loved him, even after shedding Ben Organa-Solo, and he had fought for a future for them. Ren had tried to show Hux, had held out his heart, raw and unguarded, and Hux—calculating, ruthless Hux—had crushed it underfoot in his obsession with power and revenge. 

The guilt stung more than he wanted to admit, it carved into him with a cruelty no blade could match. Hux hadn’t merely betrayed Kylo Ren; he had helped damn him, he had been the hand to push Ren down. Not by accident, not by ignorance, but by choice. By design.

For years, he had sharpened his hatred like a vibroblade, honed it until it gleamed. He had drawn blueprints for Ren’s destruction, brick by brick, building a tomb in which to bury him. All the while, he believed himself righteous, Hux had condemned Kylo for the death of Ben Solo—a crime Ren never truly committed, a falsehood Hux had clung to out of spite and pride. Hux had told himself it was justice. That Ren deserved to pay.

But it had all been a lie. A lie Hux clung to with white knuckles, because the truth—that Ren was still Ben, that the boy and the monster were one and the same—would have shattered the walls Hux built around his own heart. 

The galaxy had mocked him for his hubris, but the Force itself had mocked him louder. When the truth had come, it had not come gently. It had not whispered. It had struck like a turbolaser barrage, obliterating Hux’s carefully-constructed fury, grinding his righteous vengeance into dust.

Hux had thought himself strong, thought himself clever. But all his schemes, all his cleverness, had only made him small. He had planned to bury Ren, to end him—only to discover, too late, that Ren was the only thing that had ever made him feel alive.

And yet—by some vicious, almost merciful twist of fate—the Force had handed him a reprieve. Dragged him here, to a time outside of his own, to reunite with Ren once more. 

He would not waste it. He couldn’t .

Because somewhere deep in his gut, down where no uniform, no rank, no clever mask could shield him, Hux knew this might be the last splinter of grace the universe would ever fling his way. A door cracked open for one breath, one heartbeat, before slamming shut forever and sealing him in the dark. His only chance to reach for Ren, to cling to him with the raw, trembling grip of a man stripped bare.

And this time, if something had to burn, it would be his pride first. He would drag it to the pyre himself, watch it scream and blacken, grind its ashes into the deck plates under his boot. Better to be nothing, no one, than to lose Ren again. Better to crawl, bleeding, to rip his own name from the history books, than to live another second knowing he had let the only man who ever truly saw him slip through his fingers.

What was pride, after all, compared to the thought of Ren slipping away for good? What was reputation, control, command—any of it—when weighed against the one soul who had ever met his gaze and seen him ?

The very idea that this could be his last chance carved at his insides like glass. It felt like standing on a precipice with the wind tearing at his coat, staring into a void where Ren’s shadow flickered—close enough to touch, close enough to lose forever. He would throw himself into that void if it meant dragging Ren back with him. He would tear himself open for this, shatter into a million pieces, if the Force demanded it. Let it devour him whole, as long as it left just enough of him alive to reach Ren’s hand in the dark.

Chapter 4

Padmé sat poised across from the two redheads, the low burn of political warfare playing out like a refined game of dejarik—except the board was her sitting room, and the stakes were far more personal. She lounged gracefully on the embroidered settee, her silk robes artfully arranged around her like watercolors bleeding across canvas. Her fingers idly traced the fine gold threading along the seams, a tactile rhythm to match the calculated silence she wielded like a blade.

She knew why they were here.

Obi-Wan’s encrypted message had arrived hours earlier, thinly veiled concern masked under Jedi restraint. Anakin was missing. Padmé might have information, or at least Obi-Wan suspected as much, but whether she intended to share it was another matter entirely. That decision rested on a scale weighed by loyalties no one else in the room could hope to understand.

Hux leaned forward, his borrowed robes immaculate, voice clipped and irritated beneath a thin veneer of courtesy.

“Senator Amidala,” he began, “as enjoyable as your hospitality is, we’re under considerable time constraints. The longer Skywalker remains unaccounted for, the more complicated this situation becomes—for everyone involved.”

Padmé turned her head slowly, her smile spreading with feline precision, amused and unbothered. She looked every inch the politician, composed, beautiful, lethal. “As I’ve already said, Hux, I don’t know where Anakin is. Nor am I aware of where he intended to go.”

It was, strictly speaking, not a lie. But not the whole truth either.

She didn’t need the Force to feel Hux’s growing frustration; it radiated off him like static before a storm. They’d been circling the same diplomatic dance for over an hour. Obi-Wan had bowed out of the lead ten minutes prior, silently ceding control to the younger man once it became clear his familiar approach wouldn’t make headway with her. Padmé respected Obi-Wan, trusted him, but she was too familiar with his brand of negotiation. She could anticipate his plays before he made them. Hux, on the other hand, played with a different set of rules entirely.

That made him dangerous and interesting.

Her gaze sharpened as Hux closed his eyes for a moment, recalibrating. She felt the subtle shift—the tightening of strategy, the sharpening of intent. She felt a stir of excitement, not feigned amusement this time, but the genuine kind, knowing he could provide her a challenge. They were nearing the endgame. One more move, maybe two. Then the balance would tip, and the true victor would emerge.

“The Senate remains in emergency session,” Hux said at last, voice smoother now, controlled. “And yet, here you are, on Naboo. A woman of your stature, your responsibility, would never abandon her post during such a critical juncture. Especially not when the Senate is currently debating an escalation to war.”

Padmé didn’t blink, though her fingers paused mid-stroke along the fabric.

“So,” Hux continued, “it stands to reason: why would a sitting Senator, one known for her dedication to peace, justice, and Republic protocol, deliberately remove herself from the conversation? Unless, of course, something—or someone—more important is here.”

He let the implication hang like a blade in the air.

“Either Skywalker is here,” he said, leaning in slightly, “and you’re stalling us—”

Before he could finish, the ornate double doors to the sitting room burst open with a suddenness that shattered the room’s delicate tension like a dropped crystal.

One of Padmé’s aides cried out, trying to block the intruder, but the woman pushed past with the sheer momentum of panic. Her face was flushed, her breathing quick, and her eyes locked instantly onto Obi-Wan.

“Jedi Kenobi,” she said, voice tight with urgency. “You must help Ani. I fear… I fear he’s done something he’ll regret.”

For a moment, the room stilled, the silence instant and absolute.

Obi-Wan rose immediately, his Jedi professionalism falling into place, but his eyes flicked from the woman to Padmé with an intensity that cut through the fog of diplomacy.

“Mrs. Skywalker,” Obi-Wan said, his voice low and controlled. “Why are you here? Where is Anakin?”

Padmé stood slowly, the image of grace under pressure, and reached out to steady the older woman. Her hand brushed Shmi’s arm gently, a silent gesture of comfort. She spoke when Shmi could not gather her words. Her voice, when it came, was softer, laden with the weight of a promise.

“Anakin brought her, along with her family here,” Padmé stated. 

Obi-Wan’s brow furrowed.

“He asked me to protect them and to keep them safe.” Padmé continued, “ He begged me not to return to Coruscant. He said what was to come would be too dangerous.”

A flicker of something passed through Obi-Wan’s expression, Padmé could feel the cogs turning behind his eyes.

“I arranged a home for them here,” Padmé went on. “And for Anakin, a ship, no questions asked.” 

“Was he alone?” Hux interjected, the desperation now rising in his voice.

“No, he left with his… benefactor ," she replied coolly, eyes narrowing.

Padmé felt Shmi tense when she mentioned Anakin’s companion. She didn’t need the Force to feel the older woman’s fear. Shmi seemed to be scared of Ren, flinching back as if she would burn in Ren’s very presence. She had tried to convince Anakin to stay to no avail. 

“They came during the night,” Padmé added. “I barely saw him—he kept to the shadows, cloaked and silent. Anakin called him by name, Kylo Ren.”

Hux’s jaw clenched immediately, tight enough to whiten his skin, at the name. Not in surprise, but in recognition. His entire posture changed, the shift subtle yet unmistakable. Shoulders squared, breath caught just briefly in his throat, his hands slowly curling at his sides as if resisting an instinct. A flicker of memory crossed his eyes—unspoken, but sharp. 

“Ren,” Hux repeated, the name with a fondness. “Are you certain?”

Padmé’s nod was slow, deliberate. “Yes. That’s what Anakin called him.”

Shmi had gone pale, her hands clasped tightly in front of her chest as if to keep herself from shaking. She didn’t speak, but her silence was confirmation enough.

“He frightened you,” Obi-Wan said, his voice low, probing gently but firmly.

Shmi didn’t respond immediately. Her lips parted, then closed again. It took a moment for her voice to emerge.

“Yes,” she whispered. “He… on Tatooine, he did something...." 

Shmi trembled as Padmé gently ran her hand along her back. The memory clearly unsettled her.

“Can you show me?” Obi-Wan asked gently, stepping closer, one hand reaching out—not to grasp, but to offer.

Shmi hesitated. Then slowly, she placed her trembling hand in his.

Yes,” she whispered.

Obi-Wan nodded, then turned to Hux.

“Place your hand on ours,” he instructed. “It will be easier if you see what we do. Perhaps you’ll recognize something we don’t.”

Hux hesitated, clearly uncomfortable with the Force, but placed a pale hand atop theirs.

Padmé lifted a single brow, arms folding. “How generous of you to include him,” she said dryly.

Obi-Wan’s held their hands together. His glance at Padmé was sharp, questioning—almost dismissive. This wasn’t meant for her.

“I’ll handle this,” he said evenly, already closing his eyes to begin.

Padmé didn’t move. “You’ll handle it faster if I’m part of it,” she said, voice smooth as silk but with the weight of a Senator accustomed to being obeyed. 

For a moment, Obi-Wan looked as though he might argue. The muscle in his jaw tightened, a soldier’s instinct to keep civilians clear. But Padmé held his gaze, unblinking, until finally, reluctantly, he exhaled through his nose and gave the smallest nod.

Not permission. Concession.

Padmé allowed herself the faintest, most knowing smile as she rested her hand lightly on top of Hux’s.

“Mrs. Skywalker,” Obi-Wan said calmly, “focus on that memory. What you saw. What you felt.”

Shmi nodded.

And together, they all sank into memory.

—

Shmi Skywalker had lived beneath the twin suns of Tatooine for most of her life. She had endured the scorch of their rays, the thirst of their droughts, and the grinding days of servitude beneath their merciless heat. And now, beneath the quiet gaze of the planet’s three pale moons, she would breathe her last. She felt as the last thread of her life unraveled in her son’s arms, Shmi felt a chill that no desert wind could carry. The Force, the warmth she had never quite understood, but had always felt humming faintly around her child, drifted from her like a sigh on the wind.

She was gone before her body stilled. But even in that stillness, she remained, maybe what remained was something else—an echo. A thread between mother and son, frayed but not yet severed.

And through that thread, she felt him shatter.

Anakin clutched her lifeless form, shoulders trembling, not with grief alone, but with something far more consuming. Desperation . The kind only a child can know. Her little boy, the one who built droids out of scraps, was sobbing into her hair, whispering broken prayers. To the Force. To the stars. To any god who might be listening.

Please… please give her back.

No one answered.

No one came.

The Force, for all its promises, remained silent as her son’s heart cracked open like parched earth.

She felt it in him, the grief folding into fury, the sorrow curdling into something unrecognizable. The strings that had once anchored him to the Jedi, strings forged in discipline, duty, and sacrifice, snapped with a finality that echoed through the Force like the shatter of glass. She wanted to hold him, to hush his cries, to stroke his hair like she used to on sleepless nights when the winds howled and fear took hold. She wanted to whisper a story about sand gods and podracers and everything he would be. She wanted to tell him it would be okay.

But she couldn’t.

And so she watched, helpless, as the little boy who had once left Tatooine dreaming of stars became something else entirely.

She watched him rise, watched him ignite the blade she didn’t recognize, its light casting terrible shadows across his face. Watched as he walked away from her body—not because he was done grieving, but because there was no more space inside him for sorrow. Only rage.

She wanted to scream when he raised the saber. She wanted to look away as he turned the blade on the world that had taken her, but she couldn’t. The Force held her there, bound to him, and made her witness the darkness overtake him.

Soon, the settlement was still—save for the whine of a cooling lightsaber and the ragged sound of her son’s breath. Anakin stood in the aftermath, surrounded by ruin. No remorse. No guilt. Only the quiet devastation of a soul stripped bare.

He stepped over bodies, indifferent, his boots pressing into the sand that would soon bury the tragedy surrounding them. The desert, ever hungry, would consume the rage and blood like it had consumed her. It would swallow every sin, every scar, every shattered piece of him.

Anakin returned to her body as dawn crept over the dunes. The light touched her face gently, but it was her son’s gaze that brought the deeper ache. He knelt beside her, whispering things she could no longer hear but still somehow felt . She felt his tears fall onto her skin. Hot. Bitter. Endless. He wept like the child he used to be mourning her, the woman who had loved him beyond reason, beyond fear, beyond the limits of time.

She felt it before he did. A shift . A chill.

There was someone else now. Something now inside the room with them. 

Anakin’s instincts flared. She felt the flicker of alarm, the reach for the weapon.

The stranger stepped from the shadows, lifting their shroud, and even from beyond the veil, Shmi felt it: a presence steeped in darkness, heavy with fear and loneliness.

A voice, smooth and calm, but wrong spoke aloud. 

“Hello, Anakin Skywalker.”

The stranger looked down upon her son, his face was pale, but not in the way of someone merely lacking sun—it was almost washed, like blood had long since abandoned it. A scar ran across his face, a face with sharp cheekbones, a long, narrow nose, and a jawline that seemed chiseled by shadow.

Anakin started back from the floor, hands on his lightsaber. The pain in his eyes hadn’t yet dulled, and his grief had not finished hollowing him out. He was still coiled for a fight. The stranger saw it too, but he didn’t flinch. Instead, he shifted his stance subtly, stepping back, open hands raised in a non-threatening gesture. He made no move toward a weapon. His calm was not kindness, but calculation. Time, experience, and power weighed heavily in his favor. 

“Who…” Anakin’s voice cracked. His throat was raw from shouting, from sobbing. “…Who are you?”

The stranger studied him with unreadable eyes. Then he answered, voice low and deliberate.

“Ren, Kylo Ren.” 

Shmi saw Kylo sweep the room slowly, absorbing every grotesque detail: the blood-stained walls, the slumped bodies, the shattered instruments of pain. And in the center, the boy. The hovel reeked of suffering, it was Shmi’s prison, her torment chamber for the last two weeks. A single lantern swung from the central beam, casting warped shadows between the two men.

Kylo said nothing more. He continued watching Anakin—evaluating him. Judging.

Anakin had had enough. He rose suddenly, saber flaring, ready to strike. Blue light bathed his young face, highlighting the streaks of tears still drying on his cheeks. He lunged—

But he never reached his target.

The Force hit him like a wall. Invisible hands wrapped around his limbs and yanked him into the air. He was suspended, trapped, writhing like a fish on a hook. He struggled, wild, furious, but Kylo stepped forward, unimpressed. He had finished his assessment of Shmi’s son and found him…lacking.

He moved slowly, like a man with all the time in the galaxy. With one hand, he tilted Anakin’s chin to the side, examining him as if confirming a suspicion. Then, he reached for the braid behind the boy’s ear.

“Kriff, you’re still a padawan.” Kylo muttered, amused. 

Anakin trembled, not with fear, but with fury and shame. He was drained, both physically and emotionally. The well of fire inside him had been spent. Shmi could feel it from wherever her spirit lingered. The storm that had raged within her son was collapsing inward, consumed by exhaustion and grief.

“Who’s this?” Kylo asked, looking down at Shmi’s body.

Anakin continued to struggle, refusing to answer. His face, contorted with grief and fury, twisted further at the question.

Kylo’s eyes softened.

“…Your mother,” he said quietly.

“Get out of my head,” Anakin snarled. “Go to—”

Anakin stopped, Kylo’s expression had changed. His composure cracked, just slightly. Moisture shimmered at the corners of his eyes—not manipulation, not performance. Real. Painful. Familiar. Shmi felt it, a grief not unlike her son’s. A wound long-scarred but never healed. She could feel the ache in this stranger, this man called Ren. The same kind of pain. The same unbearable loss. It echoed between them. Kylo looked at Anakin not with pity, but recognition. 

Kylo’s gaze lingered on Shmi’s still form.

He took a single step forward, as if drawn by some invisible tether. The anger in Anakin’s eyes burned hotter, but Kylo paid it no mind as he knelt beside her slowly, reverently, ignoring the lightsaber humming near his face. His hand hovered over her brow, not quite touching. For a long moment, he simply breathed. The tension in his shoulders cracked and crumbled, like stone finally giving way under the weight of memory.

He bowed his head.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t know this happened.”

Anakin stared, confused. “What?”

Shmi watched the remaining fight drain out of her son, Kylo must have sensed it too, and he released Anakin. He did not bother to look at Anakin as he did so, instead Kylo continued to look at Shmi’s lifeless form, debating. 

 “You knew her?” Anakin’s voice was cautious, disbelieving.

“No,” Kylo replied, and yet… something in his tone suggested more.

Anakin seemed to not know what to do with the stranger, but he did not care. Crawling towards Shmi’s body, Anakin reached out with shaking hands to lift her into his arms but stopped at Kylo’s words. 

“But I can still know her,” he said softly. “If you want me to.”

Anakin froze. “…What do you mean?”

Kylo’s eyes met his. There was no smile, not really—just a shadow of something knowing. Cold. Calm. And undeniably powerful.

“What would you give,” he asked, “if I could bring her back?”

Shmi Skywalker watched, helpless and unseen, as her son stood frozen in place, wrestling with the storm raging inside him. His fists clenched at his sides, trembling, not from fear, but from the weight of the choice being placed before him. She wanted to cry out, to reach for him, to tell him it wasn’t worth it. I’m still here, she longed to say. You don’t have to do this. But the Force held her fast, like invisible chains woven from light and shadow, and her voice, her very presence, was little more than mist in the air.

Anakin’s breath came ragged. His eyes, wide and burning, flicked from her lifeless form to the dark figure beside her.

“Tell me how,” he finally rasped, his voice sharp, but shaking like a blade in an unsteady hand. “Tell me what you mean.”

Kylo Ren stood from where he had been kneeling at Shmi’s side, the motion slow and reverent, like a man rising from prayer at a grave. He didn’t speak immediately. When he stepped forward, his boots made no sound, as though the very ground feared to acknowledge him.

“There are ways,” he said quietly, almost gently. “Through the Force. There are always ways.”

Anakin’s gaze sharpened, suspicion igniting behind his eyes. “You’re lying.”

Kylo didn’t so much as flinch. His expression was unreadable, but his presence, coiled like a serpent in the Force, radiated a confidence that needed no defense.

“If I were,” he replied, voice calm, “would you still be listening?”

Anakin didn’t answer. His jaw tightened as he looked again at Shmi’s body. Silence fell between them like a veil. Then, slowly, as if summoning courage from some deep reservoir within him, he spoke.

“…What would you want?” he asked. “What price?”

Kylo tilted his head slightly, the faintest ghost of a smile flickering at the edge of his mouth.

Not warm, but knowing. Not kind, but patient.

“That depends,” he said, “on the specifics of your desire.”

Anakin’s brows drew together in confusion. What more was there to ask for? He wanted his mother back. That was all.

Kylo took another step forward, his voice a quiet whisper in the charged air.

“Perhaps,” he said, “in the days ahead, you’ll find there are… other things you want. Other things you didn’t know you wanted. So I’ll give you time. A couple of days. Think carefully. It’s better, after all, to make one wish… than many.”

Something shifted in Anakin then, a flicker of hesitation. His eyes searched Kylo’s face, and for the first time, it was as though he truly saw him, not just the man, but the shadow behind the man. The cold, fathomless presence that clung to him like a second skin. This wasn’t just some dark side wielder offering forbidden knowledge. 

His voice, when it came, was quiet. Barely more than a breath.

“…How do I contact you?”

Kylo didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he stepped closer, so close that the edges of their shadows merged on the floor.

“You’ll know,” he said, voice low, the words wrapping around Anakin like steel. “When the time comes…when you know what you desire most, when you are ready to pay the cost, you need only think of me.”

With that, he turned, cloak sweeping behind him like a curtain of night, leaving Anakin alone in the room. 

—-

Time, within the Force, bore no resemblance to the ticking rhythms of the living world. There were no hours. No minutes. No seconds. Only sensation, waves of memory, emotion, and light, endlessly folding over one another in an eternal now. Shmi Skywalker had no sense of how long she had drifted within the Force. Once Kylo had left the hovel, the Force had pulled her into its current, gently, but firmly, like a tide drawing a fallen leaf out to sea. She had not fought it. She believed it was the final departure, the last fading echo of her spirit. Her son was alive. That had been enough.

In the quiet that followed, she tried to make peace with death. She remembered Cliegg’s weathered smile, Owen’s quiet protectiveness, Beru’s warm voice echoing through their modest homestead. Her home. Her life. She mourned the moments she would never see: Anakin growing into a man, walking a path she would never witness. The Force offered no comfort, only vast, indifferent stillness.

Then something shifted.

A warmth, slow and steady, began to blossom in the space where her heart used to beat. At first, she thought it was simply a memory, an echo of the Tatooine suns, but it grew brighter, fuller. It felt like a star being born. Heat and gravity spiraled inward, gathering every scattered particle of her into a single point. The world turned green, vibrant, living green, before it engulfed her. 

Something cool and wet touched her cheek, like rain. Like tears.

Her eyelids fluttered open. The world came into focus in pieces: a dim room, a haze of golden light and beside her, him. Anakin. His hand around hers, trembling, and his eyes rimmed with red.

“Ani…?” she rasped, her voice cracking like dried wood, brittle from disuse.

“Mom.” The word was a sob. He collapsed into her, pulling her into a full-body embrace. His warmth was real. His breath hitched against her shoulder. His presence was unmistakable.

She clung to him, still disoriented. Confusion clouded her thoughts like smoke. Was she dreaming? Was this the afterlife? Had Anakin died too? Was that how they were together again?

But something in his embrace felt real. Too real.

“Stop, Mom,” Anakin said, pulling back just enough to look her in the eyes. “Don’t think too much about it.”

There was urgency in his voice, but she couldn’t stop her mind from racing. Her gaze roamed over his face, then drifted, stopping cold.

His arm. Or rather, the absence of it.

Her eyes widened in horror. “Anakin, you… what happened to your—?”

And then it all came back. The Tusken camp. The pain. The cold. The silence. Her final breath. Her death.

“No…” she whispered. Her voice trembled now with something deeper than confusion, fear. “Anakin… what did you do?”

Movement from the other side of the room drew her attention away from her son, and she saw him.

Kylo Ren.

He stood just beyond the lamplight, half-shadowed, like a memory that refused to fade. In his hand, he was slowly turning a small, black pyramid, over and over. He wasn’t watching them directly, as if to give them some semblance of privacy. 

Shmi’s body tensed. Her arms tightened around her son.

“Mom,” Anakin began, voice low, pained. “It’s not—just—please. Don’t think. Just listen to me. We don’t have a lot of time.”

There was something in his voice that stopped her from continuing to question him. 

He pressed his forehead to hers for a moment, then pulled back to look into her eyes.

“You’re on Naboo. Padmé’s here—she’ll take care of you. Cliegg, Owen, and Beru, they’re all in the next room. They’re safe. You’re safe.”

His grip tightened, almost frantically.

“I have to go. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”

She felt him start to pull away, but she held him fast, heart pounding. “Anakin, no. Stay. Please. Whatever you’ve done, whatever this is, we can fix it. We can undo it.”

Her voice cracked with desperation, fear, and love. She couldn’t lose him again. Not like this. Not to that man. Not to that thing in the corner of the room.

Her eyes shot toward Kylo, who now stood upright, eyes on the chronometer bolted to the wall.

“We have to go, Anakin,” Kylo said coolly.

Anakin hesitated, caught between worlds. His gaze lingered on his mother, but Kylo’s presence was already pulling at him like gravity, and the tether that bound him to Shmi was stretched thin.

“No, no,” Shmi said, arms locked around her son. “Don’t go with him. Whoever he is, whatever he promised, don’t do this, Anakin.”

Kylo moved. Slowly, deliberately. He stepped forward, crossing the distance with predatory calm. When he reached them, he said nothing at first. Instead, he placed one gloved hand gently on Shmi’s wrist, where she clung to her son.

The touch was ice.

The cold seemed to pass through her skin, into her bones, into her very soul. Her muscles refused to move. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. The Force—perhaps merciful, perhaps cruel—silenced her. Held her still. Her eyes locked with Anakin’s.

“Please,” she wanted to say. Please don’t leave with him. Please don’t follow that shadow into the dark. But her body wouldn’t obey.

Anakin slowly pulled free from her arms.

“I love you,” he whispered, his voice heavy with everything he couldn’t say.

And then he turned away—away from her warmth, her safety, her love—and followed Kylo Ren into the corridor beyond.

As the door hissed shut behind them, Shmi was left alone in the fading glow of the room, the ghost of her son’s embrace still lingering on her skin.

—

The air shifted—a breath held by the Force finally exhaled—as the memory unraveled and dissolved into silence. It was like the surface of still water quivering after a stone had been pulled from its depths, leaving only the echo of its absence.

Obi-Wan staggered back a half-step, unsteady as though the floor itself had shifted beneath him. He released Shmi Skywalker’s hands as if they’d turned to fire, searing him with truths he wasn’t prepared to hold. His fingers curled into the heavy folds of his robes, clutching them tightly in a futile effort to ground himself. Breathe , he told himself . Feel the floor. Be here.

The room was quiet, but not empty. The echo of what they had just witnessed hung heavy, saturating the space with Shmi’s grief and longing.

Shmi sat in the center of it all, shoulders hunched as tremors racked her body. She sobbed quietly, the sound raw, stripped of dignity, just grief in its purest, most human form. Padmé was already at her side, arms around her, whispering soft reassurances that would never be enough. She held Shmi like a daughter might a mother lost and then found again, fragile and scared and hurting.

Obi-Wan could hardly bear to look.

Anakin had paid a price for his mother’s resurrection. That much was clear. A price none of them yet understood. A price they were all afraid to ask.

Hux stood silent beside him, posture rigid, arms folded tightly across his chest. His expression was a carefully constructed mask of neutrality. To most, he might have seemed untouched by what they’d seen, but Obi-Wan could feel it, like a vibration humming beneath a taut string. The Force around Hux was disturbed, coiled. Whatever he had seen within the memory had shaken him.

Obi-Wan… was no better.

He’d seen Anakin— his Anakin—alive. Still fierce, still burning with that reckless light… but wrapped in a darkness Obi-Wan could hardly comprehend. Not a darkness imposed, but one Anakin had welcomed, opened himself to. Something corrosive yet intimate, like a cloak he’d chosen to wear. Obi-Wan didn’t dare give it a name. 

Kylo was… a Sith? Acolyte? Obi-Wan was uncertain, but he knew Kylo was dangerous. The Force writhed around him like it didn’t know whether to consume or obey him. Anakin had followed Kylo Ren, walked away willingly, as if tethered to the man by something stronger than chains. 

He hadn’t been coerced. Hadn’t been dragged. He had chosen .

That was the part that broke Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan felt emotions stirring: rage, frustration, guilt. But beneath it all… jealousy? Kriff. The thought seared through him like a blade. He hated himself for it. But there it was. Anakin had been the boy he’d raised, his Padawan, the man he’d sworn to protect. This wasn’t supposed to be personal. This wasn’t supposed to hurt like betrayal in the gut. And yet, seeing Anakin choose someone else— follow someone else—felt like being flayed alive.

And Obi-Wan knew why.

Because Obi-Wan was in love with Anakin. Not with a master’s steady hand, not with a brother’s easy affection, but with something forbidden, reckless, and consuming. He had buried it beneath duty, locked it behind walls of Jedi discipline, smothered it until he could almost pretend it wasn’t there. But now, watching Anakin stand so close to Kylo Ren, watching him walk away freely into darkness… that buried truth rose like acid in his throat.

The sting was worse than any wound he’d ever taken in battle, because this was one he’d inflicted on himself.

Disgust surged through him, raw and unrelenting. He hated himself for feeling it, hated the weakness it revealed. A Jedi wasn’t supposed to love. Wasn’t supposed to want. And Obi-Wan wanted Anakin to choose him —not the darkness, not this shadow named Kylo Ren, who had claimed what Obi-Wan had never dared reach for. The weakness was unbearable, burning through every layer of control he’d spent a lifetime building.

It was unbearable, even more so now without a bond to Anakin to blunt the edges. Obi-Wan could no longer shove the feelings that had spilled out back down. The durasteel walls he’d built to contain this love, this wretched, all-consuming hunger, were crumbling to dust. Every breath felt jagged, every thought raw and fever-bright, threatening to drag him under. But duty was a merciless thing—it left no room for drowning.

He forced the storm inward, locking it behind shaking hands and clenched teeth. He could bleed later. Right now, he had to think. Because despite everything Shmi had shown them, there were more questions than answers. Kylo was a phantom, a silhouette on the edge of vision, always half-seen, always one step away from understanding. Obi-Wan needed more than shadows. He needed truth. He needed clarity.

His eyes found Hux again and in that brief glance, they shared a silent understanding.

There would be a conversation between them, and soon.

Obi-Wan inclined his head toward Shmi. His voice, when he finally found it, was quiet and sincere. “Thank you, Mrs. Skywalker. What you shared… it means more than you know.”

Padmé straightened, still supporting Shmi with one arm, and made a subtle motion. One of her aides stepped forward, her movements practiced and precise. She carried a sleek data pad, and with a few quick taps, a star map bloomed into life above the center of the room, casting soft blue and gold light across their faces.

“This,” Padmé began, her voice steady but low, “was the last known location of the ship I gave to Anakin. Just before the tracking signal was deactivated this morning.”

The map hovered, spinning slowly as coordinates flickered across its edges. Obi-Wan leaned in, eyes narrowing. The route traced a path deep into the Unknown Regions, beyond any established hyperspace lanes. 

He frowned. “That far out… where would they even go from there?”

Beside him, Hux inhaled sharply, a sound barely audible, but unmistakable. Not in surprise but recognition.

“I know where they’re going,” Hux said, his voice tight, urgent. “But we need to leave. Now.”

Obi-Wan turned to him fully, scanning his face. There was something different about Hux now, the calm façade Hux wore had cracked. Whatever destination he’d recognized, it carried weight. This wasn’t just a place on a map. It was a scar , and it was waiting for them.

The Force whispered at Obi-Wan’s edges, sharp and restless. He hated how his heart leapt at the thought of being closer to Anakin, hated how it made his hands shake inside his sleeves. He was supposed to be above this. A Jedi. A master. Not some lovesick fool barely holding his center. He swallowed the bitterness, shoved it down deep, because if he let it surface now it would devour him whole.

Obi-Wan nodded once and turned to Padmé, though it took everything in him to keep his expression steady. “Thank you.” His voice sounded calm, measured—like it belonged to someone else.

She stepped forward, still holding Shmi’s hand, and looked between them with solemn eyes. “Please,” she said as they headed towards the door, her voice tinged with worry, “keep us updated.”

Obi-Wan offered her a faint, tired smile—the only comfort he had left to give, a brittle thing already threatening to crack. “We will.”

And with that, they stepped into the corridor. The door slid closed behind them with a soft hiss, like a breath held too long finally letting go. In its wake, Obi-Wan felt the silence rush back in—not peaceful, but suffocating, thick with everything he couldn’t allow himself to feel.

Chapter 5

Hux had wasted no time once they boarded the ship, stalking straight to the cockpit. He programmed the course to Ilum, Starkiller, as it would one day be called, with practiced precision, though his mind felt anything but precise. They would have to travel fast; Kylo and Anakin had more than half a day’s lead. Hux had needed only seconds to make the connection when he saw the map displayed before them on Naboo. He knew that sector of the Unknown Regions too well. He’d spent years there watching Starkiller rise from ice and darkness, every trench and fault line memorized in the marrow of his bones.

Hux’s mind was swirling with calculations, but it began to head towards more dangerous territories: what will I say when I see him? How do you bargain with a man you betrayed, with a man you loved so fiercely you’d burn yourself down just to stand in his shadow again?

What if Ren didn’t want him back? What if Ren didn’t even listen? What if Ren killed him before Hux got a single word out?

The cockpit door slid open with its signature hiss and disrupting his inner monologue. Kenobi stepped inside, moving with his usual measured calm, but Hux caught the faint weariness in his posture, the shadows under his eyes. For a moment neither spoke, both of them understood, the promised conversation was to come.

“Ilum,” Kenobi said finally, voice steady. “That’s where they’re going?”

“Correct. Or rather, that’s where Ren is going. Skywalker… is simply following.”

Kenobi frowned at the phrasing. “You sound certain.”

“I am.” Hux kept his gaze locked on the viewport, something he had found himself doing a lot these last few days. “But Ilum won’t be their final destination. If we don’t catch them there, we risk losing them both.”

Kenobi stepped forward, coming to stand beside him at the viewport. “You’re nervous… about facing Ren.” His tone was calm, but the observation cut like a scalpel.

“Ridiculous.” Hux let out a sharp, brittle laugh. “Do you think I’m afraid of him? I’ve ordered the execution of men without blinking. I was a spy deep in enemy territory."

“And yet,” Kenobi said, “your hands are shaking.”

A curse hissed past Hux’s teeth as he thrust his traitorous fingers deep into his pockets. “You don’t understand. You couldn’t possibly.”

“No,” Kenobi admitted. His voice was quieter now, but the edge was sharper. “But I’m trying to. What we saw—what Shmi showed us—wasn’t natural. Powers like that always demand a price.” He turned slightly toward Hux, and there was something raw in his eyes, something the Jedi was failing to bury. “And the more I learn about Kylo Ren, the more I suspect Shmi’s fear was not misplaced.”

“He’s not… he wasn’t like this before,” Hux muttered, his mind pulling back to the image of Ren he had seen in the memory. 

"Hux." The word came quiet but sharp, like a blade drawn in darkness. Kenobi’s voice no longer carried its usual calm; it was iron tempered by something far less steady. "If you know something, you will tell me now. Kylo Ren has torn Anakin from the Jedi—from me—and dragged him toward a darkness neither of us can afford to ignore. If you keep your silence now, understand what you are forcing me to do. When we find them, if I have no choice, I will meet Kylo as an enemy. I will strike him down if I must."

 

Kenobi stepped closer, voice dropping, roughened to something almost raw. “Do not leave me blind, Hux. Do not make me cut down shadows when all I want is to bring Anakin home.”

Hux felt the words like pressure on his chest, sharp and unyielding. Kenobi’s restraint made it worse, the Jedi wasn’t shouting, wasn’t threatening. He simply meant every word. For a heartbeat, Hux could not breathe. His own mind betrayed him with an image he couldn’t shake: Ren—no, Ben—crumpling beneath Kenobi’s blade, not as the Supreme Leader’s heir, but as the boy Hux had once known, raw and breakable. A man he might lose forever because Hux had stayed silent a moment too long. He prided himself on composure, on never showing fear, but in that moment something cracked. A tremor went through him that had nothing to do with the ship.

And the worst of it? Hux knew Kenobi was right. The Jedi was sworn to protect balance, not sentiment. Ren… wasn’t a Sith, not yet, but from what Hux had seen in Shmi’s memory, he was already steeped in the dark side. One step more and he would cross the final threshold, severing himself from anything human, from anyone who might still reach him. 

He swallowed hard, gaze locked on the streaking blue of hyperspace, and realized with bitter clarity: if he stayed silent, Kenobi would cut Ren down without hesitation. Not out of malice, but out of duty. 

"I… where do you want me to start?" Hux heard himself say, his voice stripped of its usual steel, raw around the edges.

“Why did Kylo go after Anakin?” Kenobi asked at last.

“I don’t know for certain,” Hux replied, each word slow, deliberate, as though if he spoke too quickly, the truth would spill unbidden. “But Anakin, who Anakin becomes… was…is someone Ren reveres. Someone Ren has always idolized.”

Kenobi’s gaze slid toward him, cool as a blade. The Jedi didn’t need to speak to make himself understood. Hux could feel the demand in that silence: That isn’t enough. Tell me what you’re not saying.

Hux’s composure wavered, just for an instant. There was no way to do this cleanly, no way to continue without drawing blood. He exhaled once through his nose, as if steeling himself. “Kylo’s real name is Ben Organa-Solo.”

Kenobi’s brow furrowed, a flicker of confusion passing over his features. “Organa? Bail’s line?”

“Yes,” Hux confirmed, voice clipped. “Though his mother—Leia Organa—was adopted by Bail. In truth, her name should have been Leia Skywalker, like her twin brother, Luke Skywalker.”

Kenobi froze, his practiced serenity fracturing at the edges. Hux saw it, felt it, the sudden spike of emotion that slipped past the Jedi discipline like water through a crack in durasteel. The cockpit air thinned, every sound dulled but the low, relentless thrum of the hyperdrive.

“Are they—” Kenobi’s voice caught, raw and hoarse, as if begging Hux to lie to him. “Is Ben…”

Hux did not soften the blow. “Ben is Anakin Skywalker’s grandson,” he said flatly, forcing the words past his teeth. “Luke and Leia are Skywalker’s children.”

Kenobi swayed, as though a physical blow had found him. For one disorienting second Hux thought the great Jedi might simply fold, collapse to the deck. Somehow, impossibly, Kenobi remained upright, every muscle in his frame locked rigid to keep the collapse contained, his very breath sounding like restraint about to snap.

Hux looked away, a stab of something uncomfortably close to guilt tightening in his chest. Delivering the blade was one thing—watching it twist was another. He granted Kenobi silence, a mercy of seconds to gather himself, but the silence didn’t soothe; it weighed heavy, pressing down on both men like a durasteel hull imploding in vacuum.

The hum of hyperspace filled the cockpit, low and steady, but to Hux it sounded almost like a countdown—like the universe itself was waiting for Kenobi to either shatter or speak.

“You said Kylo idolized Anakin, or who Anakin becomes…” Kenobi shook out, voice trembling despite the effort to hold it steady.

Hux exhaled sharply through his nose. Of course the Jedi would press the wound. It seemed Kenobi was determined to see this through, no matter how deep it cut.

“Yes,” Hux said, the single syllable dropping heavy in the charged air between them. 

“Who?” Kenobi whispered. The word was so thin it hardly seemed to exist at all.

For a brief, absurd moment, Hux wondered if this revelation would kill Kenobi outright. Could even the Jedi survive the weight of this truth? Kenobi’s face was taut as wire, and beneath the carefully schooled exterior, Hux saw it—that trembling edge where discipline gave way to raw, unshielded emotion.

Hux drew a slow breath, forcing the words past teeth that suddenly felt too heavy. “Anakin will become Darth Vader,” he said evenly. “The man Kylo Ren resolves himself to be, the man I asked him to be.”

“No…” It was barely a breath, but it carried more force than a shout. His composure collapsed in an instant. “You’re lying,” Kenobi rasped. 

“I have no reason to lie to you, Kenobi,” Hux replied, his tone stripped of any edge.

“Darth Vader… a Sith.” Kenobi’s voice shook so violently it was a wonder he could speak at all. “Anakin would never—he—” His breath caught, harsh and ragged, as though the air had turned poisonous. “How?”

“I only know what Ren told me,” Hux said carefully, choosing each word with the delicacy of someone setting down live explosives. “He said you were there when Anakin Skywalker died. That you cut him down. And from his ashes… Darth Vader was born.”

Hux had seen men break before, but never like this. It was as if the air itself fractured around Kenobi, the tightly wound Jedi composure splintering under the weight of revelation. The pain radiating off him filled the cockpit instantly—disbelief, fury, and something far deeper, something Hux instinctively knew the man would rather die than name aloud.

Then, Kenobi crumbled to the floor before Hux could react. No hesitation, no attempt at composure—just a body dropping as though the ground had been stolen from beneath him. The crack of impact echoed through the cockpit, but it was nothing compared to the sound that followed.

Sobs ripped out of Kenobi’s chest, raw and jagged, as if Hux’s words had not merely struck home but cleaved straight through flesh, bone, and heart. Hux froze, these were not the tears of a master for his padawan, nor for a fellow comrade. He knew these tears. He had wept them himself in the shadows where no one could see. These were the tears of a man shattering, a man mourning the loss of someone he had loved beyond all reason, beyond all vows. In that instant, the truth slammed into Hux with cold, merciless clarity: Kenobi loves Anakin Skywalker. Loves him as completely and as dangerously as Hux loves Ren.

Hux saw it now in every broken breath, every strangled sob—the same desperate, helpless devotion he himself carried, reflected back at him like a cruel mirror. Kenobi was kneeling on the floor, his voice broken into fractured whispers that Hux could barely make out but didn’t need to. The meaning was clear enough: I love him. I let him fall. I killed him myself.

“Obi-Wan,” Hux said before he could stop himself. The name tasted strange on his tongue, far too intimate for his own taste. He wasn’t sure if he’d meant it as comfort or simply an acknowledgment that he was witnessing something no outsider should see.

Kenobi didn’t move at first. His face stayed buried in his hands, fingers digging into his temples as if he could claw the truth out of his own skull. Hux didn’t need to see his eyes to feel the anguish radiating from him like heat from a furnace. There was no Jedi discipline here, no serene mask, only a man cracking open under the unbearable weight of love and anguish.

Kenobi finally lifted his head, eyes wild and shining, his breath still ragged as he forced words through the pain clawing at his throat. “You… you asked him to be a Sith? To be Vader?” The way he spat the name, it sounded like poison. “You… you made Ren follow that path?”

Hux swallowed hard, the words clinging like ash in his throat. “I did not know,” Hux said, filled with shame and remorse, “At the time, I wanted to hurt Ren. I wanted him to die. I wanted him to walk into darkness and burn there—burn in the same hell he’d left me in.”

Kenobi stared, speechless, as though the sheer ugliness of the admission had struck him physically.

“I thought Ren had taken someone from me,” Hux went on, his voice trembling now. “I was told Ben Organa-Solo was dead. That Ren killed him. And I believed it. Someone I deeply trusted told me, they had no reason to lie to me.” His voice cracked, splintering like brittle glass. “I didn’t know…”

“You cursed him,” Kenobi said, voice trembling so violently. “You damned him.” His shoulders shook with the effort of keeping his voice steady, but rage bled through, raw and uncontained. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? What it means to bind a man to a Sith’s shadow?”

“I know,” Hux replied, but it wasn’t defiance, more like resignation, as though the words themselves were a confession dragged from deep within his chest. He let out a slow breath that seemed to scrape at his lungs. “I know. And I did it anyway. I wanted Ren to die—slowly, painfully. I wanted to make sure of it, and this wasn’t the only way. I had plans. So many plans, each one crueler than the last.”

The truth poured from him now in an unstoppable flood, a dam shattered beyond repair. “I wanted to hurt him. I hurt him.” His voice broke, tears gathering despite his desperate attempt to hold them back. “And I hate myself for every moment of it. Every word. Every order. Every poisoned seed I planted in his path. I wish I could take it all back. I wish I could grovel before him and just beg for his forgiveness.”

“That’s why you’re looking for him,” Kenobi said, his voice quieter now, as though some of his fury had burned itself out in the face of such a naked confession. 

“Yes,” His breath hitched, “I’ve been searching for him from the moment I knew he was still alive. I hunted him—not to finish what I started, but to tell him. To tell him I was sorry. So painfully sorry for everything. For destroying him, for cursing him, for every piece of his soul I tried to break.”

Hux’s breathing came harder, faster, like a man struggling against chains wrapped around his ribs. “If killing myself would give Ren back everything I took from him—every scrap of innocence, every ounce of peace—I would do it in a heartbeat.” His lip curled, almost in a bitter laugh, but it died before it left his throat. “But the galaxy doesn’t work like that. Nothing I do can give him back what I stole.”

Kenobi stared at Hux, and for a heartbeat his expression was empty, as if watching Hux fall apart was distracting Kenobi from his own pain. 

“You wanted him dead,” Kenobi repeated, “Kylo Ren, Anakin’s grandson. You cursed him, you plotted a dozen ways to destroy him… because you thought Ren had killed himself ?”

“I didn’t know,” Hux whispered, but the words rang thin, pitiful even to his own ears.

“You didn’t care to know,” Kenobi snapped, his voice surging suddenly, crashing over Hux like a wave against rock. “You wanted revenge. You wanted blood. And now what?” His eyes blazed as they fixed on Hux. “What’s your plan, Hux? Because if all you plan to do is offer an apology, then we have no plan at all.”

Kenobi’s words struck like blaster fire, clean, sharp, and merciless. You didn’t care to know. The accusation burrowed under Hux’s skin because it was true. In those days, when he first heard of Ben’s death, Hux had told himself vengeance was strength, that hatred was clarity. But instead of clarity, he had blinded himself instead. Now, he felt only the sour taste of rot where that hatred had once burned bright.

Hux wanted to retort, to defend himself, to spit something cruel—but the words wouldn’t come. What defense could there be, when every syllable of Kenobi’s words rang with the same truth Hux whispered to himself at night? 

“I need to find him,” Hux said at last, his voice low and hoarse, almost unrecognizable to his own ears. “Even if he never forgives me. Even if he kills me the second he sees me.” He drew a breath that scraped like glass. “I loved Ben. I still do. But I also love the man he became—the man I damned, the man I tried to destroy. The man that I’ll follow into the dark if he won’t return to the light.”

The cockpit fell silent, the kind of silence that hums with things unspoken. Kenobi’s breath was ragged, but not from anger this time. His eyes, red-rimmed and shining, studied Hux with a strange, searching intensity, as though trying to decide whether this confession was madness or courage, or if it even mattered which.

“You’re a fool,” Kenobi whispered. The words were soft, stripped of venom, almost weary. Then his mouth twitched, not quite a smile, more a flicker of bitter recognition. “But so am I.”

Hux felt the weight in the air shift, not quite softening but settling. The Jedi’s gaze no longer carried only judgment—it carried something Hux hadn’t expected. Understanding. Mutual damnation, mirrored back at him.

A low chime broke the silence. The navicomputer’s voice followed, cool and precise: “Approaching destination. Exiting hyperspace in thirty seconds.”

Hux blinked, dragged roughly back into the present. The endless stars outside the viewport had already begun to smear and twist, the telltale warning before the galaxy snapped back into realspace.

Kenobi pulled himself from the floor, scrubbing a sleeve across his eyes, wiping away the traces of tears he had shed. The Jedi’s composure was threadbare at best, the kind that frays with the smallest tug.

The ship shuddered as it dropped out of hyperspace. Starlines collapsed into pinpoints, revealing a frozen, blindingly white world floating in the darkness. Ilum. Its surface was a jagged expanse of glittering snowfields and crystalline ridges, broken only by the yawning chasms that cut through the ice like open wounds.

The computer’s voice chimed again: “Orbit achieved. Awaiting coordinates for descent.”

Kenobi moved from beside him to the nav system, hands slowly steadying through sheer force of will as he entered in coordinates. Hux turned to leave the cockpit, preparations already crowding his mind before meeting Ren. The shuttle’s engines rumbled beneath their feet, dipping into Illum’s thin freezing atmosphere. The world below them stretched out like a grave waiting to be filled. A single, final thought coiled tight in his mind, cold and unyielding as the planet’s heart: If this is the end, then let it come. But not before I see him again.

–

They had arrived on Illum hours earlier, but a sudden blizzard had kept them on their ship, which suited Anakin just fine. They would need the cover of darkness for what they planned on doing, what Kylo planned on doing. Anakin was just going to stand guard as the man went into the caverns in search of kyber crystals. 

Anakin studied the back of the man before him as they made their way through the snow banks of Illum towards a back entrance that Anakin’s master had once shown him in passing. Kylo was tall, taller than Anakin by a very tiny tiny margin, but it felt like Kylo towered over him in presence alone. Kylo walked through the snow with a purpose, as if this was a causal walk on duracrete through a city, there was a regal grace to him. Like Padme when she walked through a ball room, like the practice ease of Obi-Wan. 

He stumbled, tripping in the snow, his mind too busy to notice that he had reached his destination. Anakin reached out a hand to catch himself, but Kylo got to him first. Gloved arms righted him before anything too disastrous could happen. 

“Thank you.” Anakin said, looking up towards Kylo. The man gave him a non committal nod, before turning back to look at the cavern entrance. 

Anakin watched as Kylo fixed his veil back over his face. A veiled that served more purpose than just to ward off the harsh winds of Illum. Even back on the ship, when Kylo had taken off his heavy outer robe, Kylo had kept that dark veil covering most of his face, no, kept it on to cover the scar that bisected his face. There was a story there. A heavy one. Anakin wanted to ask—but didn’t dare.

“Wait here,” Kylo instructed, “I won’t be too long.”

“Okay.” Anakin said in confirmation as the dark figure of Kylo slipped into the cavern proper.

Anakin strode inside, just past the entrance to be hidden from anyone that might be walking by. He settled himself against a wall, trying his best to put himself in a strategic position. Nervously, he brushed a hand through his hair, instinctively reaching to tuck his padawan braid behind his ear—only to stop, eyes dropping to the mechanical fingers that met his temple instead. The new limb whirred softly as it came to a halt. 

Kylo had taken the braid and with it, Anakin’s bond with Obi-Wan. 

Anakin took a deep breath to steady himself, repeating to himself that it had been part of his price. A price he had been willing to pay. He felt his flesh hand shake as he leaned his head back against the wall, trying to hold back tears. Obi-Wan. Anakin had tried to avoid reaching out to the force, but now stuck in his own mind, Anakin allowed himself to feel what remained of their bond. The cauterized end hummed faintly in the back of his mind—silent, cold, dead. It felt like touching the edge of a blade. 

Kylo had been merciful, in his own way. He’d done it while Anakin was unconscious. He’d spared him the agony of feeling it being severed, but Anakin still felt the dull ache that remained. The golden bond he had spent so many years cherishing, cultivating, was now burnt black as the empty night sky. 

It was part of the deal, Anakin reminded himself. A price agreed upon, a price he had paid willingly.

But the ache in his chest didn’t care about intentions or deals. His breath hitched, and Anakin blinked hard. The tears stung, but didn’t fall. Not yet. There was too much at stake for regret. A broken bond was worth his mother’s life, worth killing the sith, worth fulfilling his duties as the Chosen One. Worth ensuring that the Jedi Order would remain intact. Worth Obi-Wan’s life. 

Anakin would be okay, he had to be okay. He repeated it like a mantra, forcing the words to fill the hollow place inside him. Regardless of what Ren was, Sith, Jedi, or something in between, Anakin had made his decision back on Tatooine, and now he would fulfil his duty. He had to, there was too much riding on it for Anakin to back out now. 

He pushed his palms against his eyes, hoping to hold back the tears. Anakin would not allow himself to cry when he still had so much to do. He needed to pull himself together, needed to follow the plan that Kylo had laid before him. He drew a long breath, forcing his thoughts into order, forcing his heartbeat to steady—

—and then he felt it. The presence of his master, unmistakably and heading his direction. Anakin felt caught in the worst possible act of his life. His mind emptied, refusing to work as Anakin tried to salvage this. Should he get Kylo and run, did they have time? Or should he stay and confront his master?

The choice burned through him in a single heartbeat. There would be no running. Not from this.

He forced himself from the wall, pulling his lightsaber from his belt. Anakin walked forward, each step felt like walking to his own execution. He would do what he must, like Obi-Wan had taught him, even if it would be placing themselves on opposite sides. 

Outside, Ilum stretched in a vast, frozen silence, the snowfields glowing pale under a canopy of stars. The darkness sharpened every edge, the jagged ridges, the glitter of ice, even the steam of his own breath curling in the thin air. It felt like walking into a dream or an ancient painting, colors drained to black, white, and silver, lonely and haunting, carved straight into Anakin’s heart. And at the center of it all, a single figure moved toward him, growing clearer with every step.

Obi-Wan’s auburn hair caught the starlight as the wind tore it loose, his beard longer and rougher than Anakin remembered. His usually immaculate robes hung wrinkled and travel-worn, snapping against his legs with each stride. He did not approach with his usual grace but with a raw, relentless drive, as if nothing else in the galaxy mattered but closing the distance between them. The snow crunched under his boots in a steady, unwavering rhythm, and the sound froze Anakin in place.

Anakin met his master’s eyes across the frozen plain, held his stare as the gap closed, searching for the disappointment he feared. But in that cold blue gaze he found no condemnation, only relief, and something more, something he dared not name under the stars. 

Obi-Wan came to a stop before him, his voice low, breath clouding in the frigid air, “Anakin.”

The name alone undid him. The tears he’d been holding back finally broke loose, freezing as they trailed down his cheeks in Ilum’s bitter wind. The weight of his decision crashed over him like a tidal wave, cold and merciless, sweeping away every shred of resolve. Obi-Wan’s voice—just that single word—tore it apart like flimsi, shredded and useless.

“Anakin.” Obi-Wan said it again, softer now, reaching out. 

The stars above burned white and distant, scattered like distant watchfires across Illum’s night sky. They felt too far away to offer light, yet near enough to witness Anakin falling apart. The wind howled through the cavern mouth behind him, tugging at his cloak, scattering the warmth from his body. Anakin’s fingers tightened reflexively around his lightsaber hilt, but his arm felt too heavy to raise. His breath hitched, misting between them in ragged bursts.

Anakin swallowed hard, his throat raw. “You shouldn’t be here, Master.” He tried to make it sound firm, but his voice cracked like ice underfoot. “You’ll only get in the way.”

“In the way?” Obi-Wan shook his head, the wind whipping his cloak around his legs. “I’m trying to help you. You’re my Padawan, Anakin. I—” His voice faltered. “I was so afraid I’d lost you.”

Anakin turned his gaze aside, blinking fiercely against tears that stung and froze on his lashes. “I’m not your Padawan anymore,” he muttered, the words nearly stolen by the wind.

Obi-Wan’s gaze sharpened, wounded but unyielding. “No. You will always be my Padawan, and whatever you’ve done, whatever this is, we can face it together.” He took another step forward, his boots crunching in the snow. “You don’t have to carry this alone.”

“I do.” Anakin’s breath came in ragged bursts, mist curling between them. He tightened his grip on his lightsaber as though it were the only anchor left to him. “You don’t understand. If I fail—if I stop now—everything falls apart. The Order. My mother. You.”

“You’re not failing,” Obi-Wan said, the plea raw now, stripped of its usual calm. “You’re losing yourself.” His hand reached again, almost brushing Anakin’s sleeve. “Come back to me. Please.”

Anakin closed his eyes, unable to withstand the look in his master’s face. It was like staring into sunlight reflected off endless snow — too bright, too pure, burning his vision even when he tried to turn away. The guilt pressed on him like a glacier, cold and crushing, its weight settling over his chest until every breath felt shallow and strained. It filled his lungs with ice, coiled around his heart, whispering that he had betrayed the only man who had ever truly believed in him.

He could not meet those eyes. Not when they still held hope. That hope was a knife, sharper than any lightsaber, cutting through every excuse and every carefully built wall inside him. It told him that Obi-Wan still saw the boy he’d trained, still trusted that Anakin could be saved — and Anakin hated himself because part of him wished he could believe it too. But he had made his choices. He had traded too much. To see that hope now was unbearable, because it was hope he did not deserve.

“I can’t,” Anakin whispered, shaking his head. “Not this time.”

He turned sharply, as if the motion would sever this moment between them. He needed to find Ren, he needed to leave before he let Obi-Wan convince him otherwise. But Obi-Wan stepped in front of him, barring the way, one hand darting out to seize Anakin’s remaining flesh hand in an iron grip. It was as though he meant to tether them together physically now that the bond they once shared through the Force lay severed.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, voice breaking as it rose against the wind, “Please…”

Obi-Wan’s fingers closed around his hand, warm despite the freezing wind, anchoring him in place. For an instant, the galaxy narrowed down to them, the breath rising in uneven clouds between them, stars wheeling in their cold infinities overhead, snow stretching outward in unbroken silence, and all the words unspoken pressing like a weight between them.

“Master…” Anakin’s voice quivered like a frayed wire. “I’m sorry.”

Then a flicker of motion cut through the moment. Not Obi-Wan. Not him. Someone else.

The stillness ruptured. Anakin’s every nerve went taut. He wasn’t thinking anymore, there was no space left for it. Only the sudden, brutal knowledge of what Kylo was about to do.

“Wait—Kylo, don’t!” The cry ripped from his throat, raw and commanding, echoing off the cavern walls. He wrenched his hand free of Obi-Wan’s grip, the break sudden and violent. Snow crunched under his boots as he lurched forward, cloak snapping in the wind, pushing Obi-Wan aside and bracing for the impact of the blaster bolt. The stars above seemed to tilt, the entire world narrowing to a single heartbeat — too fast, too late, too far away to stop what was coming.

Notes:

I apologize to everyone who accidently read the original chapter 5 that I posted. I meant to save it as a draft and posted it in error. I originally wrote an outline for this story but as I wrote it, Kylo and Obi-Wan just took it somewhere else entirely so I scrapped it. I actually wrote three different versions of this chapter and honestly I still am not in love with it. It also forced me to go back and edit everything I had already posted to match where I want it to go. So I'm sorry to everyone who read the original, and liked it better.

I hope everyone is buckled in for a long ride as I am currently working on chapter 12 right now and not even half way through my current outline. Just to let everyone know this is all the ages of everyone in the story as the timeline can get confusing.

Hux - 35
Kylo - 29
Obi-Wan - 35
Anakin - 19
Padme - 24

Chapter 6

“You took everything from me, Ren. Everything!” Hux’s voice cut through the howling wind, sharp and raw with fury. Snow lashed around them like angry spirits, swirling in chaos as the ground groaned beneath their feet. Across the widening chasm, Hux stood with FN-2187 held in a vice grip, the scavenger girl, Rey, by his side. In his other hand, a blaster glinted black and steady, leveled squarely at Kylo Ren.

Kylo staggered forward, blood painting streaks down his armor, seeping through gashes in his side and face. He dragged himself upright from the snowbank he’d collapsed into, each breath a burning rasp in his throat. The wound on his face split further as he met Hux’s eyes—wild and grief-stricken across the divide.

The hate in Hux’s eyes wasn’t just hate.

It was love. It was loss, poisoned and cracked and still burning like acid through his veins.

“I loved him,” Hux hissed, voice raw, his fury now edged with something more devastating. “I loved him more than my own person.”

Kylo’s legs trembled, fury the only thing anchoring him. His lightsaber sparked weakly in his grasp. The planet was tearing itself apart. Starkiller Base rumbled violently beneath them, glaciers crumbling into nothing, the chasm stretching ever wider between them. The sky above was bruised with fire. It mirrored the pain in Kylo’s heart, the rage boiling through his very being at Hux’s revelation. 

“Starkiller was never built to last,” Hux spat. “I designed it to fail, to tear itself apart should it ever be put to use. Its only true purpose—its final purpose—was to be your tomb.”

Kylo’s heart pounded as if trying to escape his chest. He took one broken step forward. “ Who? ” he screamed over the wind, desperation tearing through every syllable. “ Who did I take from you? ”

The wind screamed louder, as if trying to drown out the answer. He needed to know. He had to know. Because something was breaking inside him, something fragile that he thought had died long ago. His rage—his armor—was crumbling, and all that was left underneath was fear and confusion.

Hux’s eyes gleamed with bitter tears. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Ben Solo,” Hux said. His voice was almost gentle now, reverent even. “I loved Ben Organa-Solo.”

Kylo didn’t react at first. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t feel the snow or the pain or the blood anymore. It was like someone had torn a hole straight through him and everything he thought he was. The  name struck like a dagger, swift and silent. 

Ben Organa-Solo.

The name shattered something inside him. Not because it was unfamiliar but because it was a name that still hurt. A name he had buried. A boy he had killed —with his own hands, by his own choices.

Ben Organa-Solo.

Hux had loved... him?  

No. No, it didn’t make sense. It couldn’t make sense.

He staggered backward a step, breath ragged, heart crashing against his ribs like it wanted to escape his chest. A cold panic clawed its way up his throat. He felt exposed, like Hux had just ripped open his soul and left it bleeding out in the snow for all to see.

Then the world lurched.

A blaster bolt cracked through the storm. It missed his head by a breath, searing into his shoulder and spinning him backward. He collapsed into the snow once more, pain exploding in white-hot waves through his body, his lightsaber clattering from his grasp. He hadn’t even tried to deflect it. He couldn’t. The revelation paralyzed him more than any wound could. Pain tore through him—but it was nothing compared to what he felt inside.

Ben Organa-Solo.

The name echoed in his skull, hollow and familiar and suffocating all at once. He couldn’t stop hearing it. Couldn’t stop seeing the look in Hux’s eyes, grief, betrayal, something raw and real that Kylo had never imagined the man he knew as General Hux capable of feeling. For a moment, Hux hadn’t looked like a general. He looked human. Devastated. And worse— honest. 

Somewhere far off, Rey screamed, urging Hux and FN-2187 to flee. The planet was dying beneath them, and Kylo stayed motionless in the snow, staring upward at the sky. Cracks of light and flame split the clouds, and above them, the battle raged on—ships, screams, explosions—but it all sounded so far away, like a memory fading even as it was lived.

Tears blurred his vision. They came without permission, spilling into the snow with the blood seeping out of him.

Kylo didn’t understand.

Kylo didn’t want to understand.

Above him, he watched the Falcon rise into the fire-veined sky. He watched it grow smaller, until it vanished entirely and Kylo realized the truth.

He had killed the only part of himself that was capable of being loved.

The tears came faster, unbidden. Kylo didn’t fight them. And then, finally, something inside him gave way. Kylo Ren closed his eyes. And as the storm consumed the sky, he let go of everything—Hux’s voice, the pain, the heartbreak—and surrendered himself to the dark.

Not because it gave him strength.

But because it was all he had left.

—-

Kylo jolted awake, breath catching in his throat like a sob. His palms were slick with sweat, pressed into the cold floor of the kyber cavern, and when he lifted one slightly, he saw the faint shimmer of tears pooled beneath him—his own, though he didn’t remember crying. His heart ached, the illusion, no, the memory lingered like poison in his veins, a jagged edge he couldn’t stop pressing against. He’d thought time would dull it. That it would fade, eventually. But it hadn’t. It lingered like an open nerve, raw and exposed. A splinter in the soul. Always present. Always pulsing.

Hux had loved Ben Solo.

Hearing the truth from Hux had been painful, it burned more than any of the wounds he had received that day, it still hurts even now. To know that the man Kylo had tried to be for Hux, could not compare to the memory of Ben. To know that by killing Ben and coming to the First Order, Ren had doomed their love. It wasn’t just the grief of knowing he’d lost something. It was the way he’d lost it. The bitter truth that the version of himself Hux had loved would never return. 

A part of him had hoped he had died on Starkiller, had let it be his tomb like Hux had intended. That Hux’s final act of revenge had succeeded—that the weapon's death throes had swallowed him whole and buried Kylo Ren with it. Maybe then his heart wouldn’t hurt so much. But he hadn’t died, he had crawled out of the rubble, half-dead, and half-mad. 

The force refused to let him die. 

So he steeled himself, and did the only thing he could do. One final act, a suicide mission, if he was honest with himself, to give Hux what he wanted. He would bring back Ben Solo, the Ben Solo that Hux had loved. Or at least he had tried, but the force had had other ideas. Instead of winding back through his own fractured timeline, the holocron had hurled him into the past—to his grandfather’s era. To Anakin Skywalker .

He couldn’t even ask Orshool, the gatekeeper of the holocron that Kylo had taken from the vaults beneath Snoke’s citadel. Orshool had been silent since Kylo last used the holocron on Tatooine. So Kylo carried on with his plan, his now modified plan, because he hadn’t been prepared to meet his grandfather. He would have preferred Vader. Vader, he understood—rage, control, the seductive gravity of power and the darkness. Kylo knew darkness. It was familiar, constant, but meeting Anakin Skywalker…it had been unsettling. 

The force will take you to when your fate was decided, Orshool had told him.

He sat up slowly, groaning as his spine cracked in protest, every muscle stiff from the cold stone floor. The cavern air was sharp and bitter, biting into his lungs with each breath. His fingers ached as he unclenched his fist. The kyber crystals were still there, their jagged edges grinding into his palm hard enough to draw blood. They were rough, unyielding, thrumming faintly with a hostile vibration, as though resenting his touch.

They hadn’t come to him willingly. He’d had to tear them from the walls of the crystal caves, rip them from their resting places like bones wrenched out of living flesh. They hadn’t sung to him as they should have. No pure resonance, no bond. Just silence and defiance. But he didn’t care. He had no time to kneel in patience and wait for one to choose him.

The crystalline walls glittered with soft reflections, catching his silhouette and fracturing it into a dozen warped images—like ghosts watching him pass as he made his way back towards the entrance. The air was quiet here, reverent, humming faintly with the presence of the Force, but even that reverence felt like judgment.

You don’t belong here, the crystals seemed to whisper . You don’t belong anywhere.

Kylo ignored the unspoken judgment. He tugged his robe closer around his shoulders, though it did nothing to hold in the warmth he no longer felt. That warmth had bled out of him long ago, somewhere between Starkiller Base and the cold slab of Snoke’s citadel where he’d awakened broken and remade. 

The cavern pressed narrower as he moved on, the walls closing in until the passage forced him sideways to squeeze through. Each step scraped against stone and ice, before opening up to the muted glow of the main cavern and—voices.

Kylo froze mid-step, every nerve flaring alive. The sound carried faintly down the tunnel, muted but distinct.

One voice was unmistakably Anakin—steady, uncertain, young.

Kylo slid the blaster from his belt in one smooth, silent motion. He pressed himself flat against the cavern wall, letting its icy surface leech even more heat from his body, slowing his breath until it barely fogged the air. The Force sharpened his senses to a knife’s edge—heartbeat slowing, every sound magnified, every movement precise. He crept forward, step by careful step, hugging the wall so tightly the stone scraped his shoulder. 

Anakin stood framed by the cavern entrance, shoulders slightly hunched, like a delinquent summoned before judgment, head bowed with remorse. Before him, back to Kylo stood a man, who reached out to grip Anakin’s flesh hand. 

“Anakin,” the voice said, cracked, hoarse. A plea soaked in grief. “Please…”

“Master…” Anakin’s voice quivered like a frayed wire. “I’m sorry.”

Kylo stepped out of the shadows in a single, deliberate motion, the cold weight of the blaster steady in his grip. Frost crunched sharply beneath his boots, the brittle sound tearing through the cavern’s hush like breaking bone. Anakin’s startled eyes snapped to Kylo. 

“Wait—Kylo, don’t!” The words cracked through the stillness, echoing off the walls in jagged bursts, urgent and raw.

Three things happened at once the instant the bolt screamed from Kylo’s blaster.

First, Anakin shoved the man beside him out of harm’s way, his cloak snapping like a torn banner in the icy wind as he threw himself into the path of danger.

Second, Kylo, felt the Force twist and he instantly redirected the bolt away, sending it flying harmlessly into the forest beyond. 

And then—

Pain.

A second bolt, not his own, punched through the frigid air and slammed into his chest with the blunt, shocking force of a hammer blow. Kylo barely had time to register the flash of light before the impact hurled him backward. His body slammed into the cavern wall with bone-rattling force. The jagged kyber crystals tore into his back, shredding his cloak, biting into flesh.

The breath was ripped from his lungs in a brutal rush, the cold air searing his throat as he gasped and choked. His vision blurred—stars bursting across his sight, or maybe just the fractured light refracted through the crystalline walls, each sharp glint slicing at his eyes. The cavern smelled of scorched ozone, the sound of melting ice dripping steadily in the shadows like an ominous clock.

Then—he felt it.

A presence.

Familiar. 

Impossible.

Kylo forced his head up, every movement weighted with agony.

Stepping out of the tree line like a phantom dredged from Kylo’s own fractured memory was Armitage Hux. The gale caught him at once, whipping his pale hair into a copper-and-crimson snarl, loose strands lashing against his brow and falling into cold blue green eyes. He wore robes the color of new-fallen snow, seamless against the white world around him, as though Ilum itself had shaped him from its frozen marrow and set him walking.

Hux was beautiful in the cruelest way, terribly, unbearably beautiful. A beauty so sharp it carved through Kylo’s chest, leaving him trembling. He didn’t seem to walk from the tree line so much as emerge from it, as though the storm itself had parted to reveal him. Snow flurried around him like drifting ash from a holy fire, each flake catching pale light as though reluctant to fall upon him.

Kylo’s breath hitched, ragged, as if the cavern had become a cathedral and Hux its god descending the altar steps. The wind’s howl became a vast organ note, echoing in Kylo’s skull, reverent and holy. Step by step, the phantom of Hux came closer, the distance closing between them. Kylo would have fallen to his knees willingly, head bowed, would have spilled blood like wine in offering—anything to make him real. Anything to touch him, to bask in that merciless light.

He wanted to speak. To curse, to confess, to scream, to laugh. But the words tangled like thorns in his throat. His lips moved soundlessly, his chest heaved, and still he only stared—breath shallow, heart pounding like a drum in some sacred procession. For one delirious moment, Kylo believed the galaxy itself had split along its seams to pour this vision into the world, this cruel revelation, coming not to save him, but to wound him one final time. It made sense in a way that felt inevitable. Of course Hux would return like this, a phantom draped in white, a judgment sent from some higher order of the Force.

“Hux,” he rasped, voice shredded, raw from more than just injury. “You’re not real.”

The corners of Hux’s mouth twitched, almost a smile, as if seeing Ren again was something worth smiling about. Hux closed the last bit of distance between them, standing above Ren like a god looking down at his only worshiper, so close Kylo could see frost clinging to the hem of his robe, melting as the heat of his body bled into the icy air. It felt so real. 

“Ren.” 

His name on Hux’s lips was everything Kylo had ever wanted, soft, unguarded, thick with a love that burned through the cold like a flare. Kylo tried to laugh, but it escaped as a ragged, bloody cough that left a metallic taste on his tongue. The cavern tilted around him, light fracturing off the crystal walls into shards of color, dazzling and disorienting. For a dizzy heartbeat, he thought he might simply collapse here, at the feet of this apparition, and let it take him.

“This is a lie,” Kylo whispered, pulling himself to sit up. “Another trick.”

Hux shook his head, stepped closer still, until his breath mingled with Kylo’s shallow gasps. Each shallow gasp Kylo dragged into his lungs mingled with Hux’s exhale, warm against his frozen skin, so real it hurt.

“Then touch me, Ren, feel for yourself.” 

Kylo’s blaster slipped from numb fingers, striking the stone floor with a hollow clang that echoed off the crystal walls. His vision swam, edges dimming, as he reached out with a trembling gloved hand toward the figure he still half-believed to be an illusion. When his palm met warmth, solid, living flesh, Kylo’s eyes fluttered shut. The sensation was unbearable, too much after so much cold, too much emptiness. 

This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be, yet the warmth seeped through his glove, traveled up his arm, flooding his heart with something sharp and frantic. The sudden swell of feelings threatened to drown him: disbelief, hunger, fury, love. It was too much, all at once, a tidal wave crashing through the cracks in his armor.

Then Hux’s hand, ungloved and steady, came up to cup Kylo’s cheek. Real and warm. Hux’s thumb traced a line along Kylo’s cheekbone, feather-light but deliberate, grounding him with every trembling heartbeat, as if Hux feared he might dissolve into mist.

Kylo forced his eyes open, though they stung with unshed tears. Hux’s face hovered close, freckles vivid against wind-burned skin, his breath soft and uneven, pale lashes rimmed with damp from the snowmelt. Those eyes, raw and unguarded, stripped of every wall Kylo had ever known, caught him and held him fast. The galaxy beyond them vanished—the bitter wind, the gleam of the cavern walls, even the throb of pain in his chest.

When Hux’s lips pressed against his forehead, not quite a kiss, more a vow whispered into skin. Kylo’s breath broke in a ragged sob, as if the accumulated weight of years, of choices and betrayals and sleepless nights, came crashing down all at once. Desire, fury, grief, and love tangled into something unendurable, a single searing ache that hollowed him out. It was too vast, too consuming—too much to crave and loathe and worship in the same heartbeat, too much to finally touch the living presence he had starved for like a man dying of thirst. 

The Force roared in his skull, dizzy and electric, until he no longer knew if he was alive, dying, or dreaming. It pressed against the inside of his bones, tearing at him with invisible claws, stripping him down to something raw and trembling. He wanted to laugh—wild, hysterical—at the absurdity of it, at the galaxy’s cruelty. He wanted to scream until his throat tore open, to pour out every ounce of rage and grief and love festering inside him. He wanted to fall to his knees at Hux’s feet, to clutch at him like a sinner clawing at the hem of a savior, to beg him never to leave again.

He wanted to hate him, to drown in that old familiar fire, to scorch away this unbearable softness before it consumed him whole. And yet—he wanted to hold him, to anchor himself to the only solid thing in a universe spinning apart. He wanted to bury his face in that wind-burned neck, to breathe him in until he was drunk on it, to carve this moment into his memory into his very being. Every heartbeat hammered against his ribs like a fist demanding escape, as if his body itself couldn’t contain the surge of wanting, the terror of losing, the impossible miracle of Hux standing here, real and close enough to touch.

“I’m real,” Hux murmured, raw, trembling at the edges, as though speaking them aloud cost him blood. His voice carried none of the polished steel Kylo remembered from war rooms and star destroyer bridges, it was hoarse, unguarded, almost pleading. “I came for you.” His breath shuddered, warming Kylo’s frozen cheek as his thumb swept, hesitant, over skin gone pale with pain. “I can’t let you die… not like this. Not without me.”

Each syllable fell heavy, striking Kylo harder than any blow. They sank deep, cutting through the haze of pain and disbelief, rooting themselves inside him where no blade could reach. Kylo clung to the sound, to the press of Hux’s palm against his jaw, to the heat radiating from his body, as though every fragment of him needed to prove this wasn’t a trick of the Force, wasn’t some cruel mirage summoned to torment him.

Hux’s hand steadied him, pulled him upright when his strength faltered, fingers curled into the heavy fabric of Kylo’s cloak, anchoring him, refusing to let him slip. Kylo didn’t resist, he gave himself up, offered himself one last time into Hux’s embrace.

For one unbearable heartbeat, the galaxy stopped spinning, the cavern, his mission, Anakin, it all dissolved into a hush. There was nothing but this: the solid press of Hux’s body, the heat radiating through layers of snow-soaked fabric, the sharp scent of cold iron and wind clinging to him. Nothing but the steady thrum of another heart against his own, the quiet rasp of breath close to his ear. This impossible promise, fragile and blazing all at once, cradled between them like a spark too precious to lose.

Notes:

I'm horrible at tagging my writing, so if anyone has tag suggestion feel free to recommend them. I will add them as needed.

Thank you.

Chapter 7

The Naboo diplomatic cruiser was all soft curves and understated luxury, cream-colored bulkheads trimmed with gilt, recessed lighting designed to soothe rather than glare. Even the deck beneath his boots was muffled by fine carpeting, the sort of thing meant for courtiers and senatorial envoys, not Jedi Knights who hadn’t slept properly in… well, longer than he cared to admit. Obi-Wan had been floored when he realized Padme had given Anakin and Kylo a diplomatic cruiser, one meant for a queen. 

Obi-Wan was frankly surprised his Padawan hadn’t been robbed at blaster point this far out in the Unknown Regions. The sheer audacity, the recklessness — and yet, despite himself, a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Only Anakin would pull something so profoundly stupid and emerge entirely unscathed. Chosen One indeed.

The smile faded as his gaze settled on the door ahead. Perfectly ordinary: polished durasteel, Naboo crest worked into its surface in elegant relief. Yet it felt less like an entryway and more like a threshold to something far heavier. Obi-Wan drew a breath, letting it out slowly. His reflection in the door looked older than it had any right to — hair mussed from running his fingers through it too many times, eyes shadowed, mouth set in a line he knew Master Qui-Gon would have scolded as needlessly severe. He told himself this was just another conversation with his Padawan. He had given a hundred lectures, a thousand corrections, endured countless sulks and shouted arguments. 

His hand hovered near the door control. Just press it. Just step inside and talk to him. Obi-Wan closed his eyes briefly, feeling the cool hum of the ship beneath his feet, the faint vibration of the engines carrying through the hull, grounding him in the moment. He pressed the door chime before he could think better of it. The soft Naboo tone sounded absurdly polite, at odds with the knot in his stomach. A hiss followed, the door sliding open without resistance. 

Inside, the small quarters were almost unsettlingly clean, so clean that for a moment Obi-Wan wondered if he’d walked into the wrong cabin. The bed was neatly made, the floor bare, every surface wiped down as though no one had set foot inside since launch. Not a datapad left open, not a single robe tossed carelessly over a chair.

The only sign this room belonged to Anakin at all was the spare mech arm lying half-dismantled on the side table, its innards spread with precision. Where were the cluttered tools, the discarded tunics, the inevitable trail of kaf mugs Anakin always seemed to leave behind at the Temple? Obi-Wan’s brow furrowed, the strangeness of it all prickling at him. 

His gaze fell to the viewport, and he found Anakin curled up beneath a thick blanket, his back to the door, staring out into the infinite stretch of space. The blanket seemed too large for him, wrapped around his shoulders as though to shield him from some unseen storm. His legs were drawn up, knees tucked tightly to his chest, arms wound protectively around them — as though he were trying to contain something inside, something he couldn’t bear to let go of.

The soft glow from the stars outside bathed his face in pale light, casting sharp shadows under his eyes, and highlighting the hollow lines of his jaw. His usual restless energy was gone. In its place was a young man, weary and adrift, barely holding himself together. Anakin’s eyes, usually so bright and fierce, were dull and distant as they gazed out into the endless expanse of space. It was as if he were searching for something, or perhaps hoping to escape something. His hands, curled tightly against his legs, trembled slightly, and Obi-Wan’s heart clenched at the sight.

Obi-Wan took another tentative step forward, his eyes never leaving Anakin's form, as if looking away might break something delicate between them. His throat tightened, his heart thumping in a strange, unfamiliar rhythm. Anakin’s gaze remained fixed on the stars, and for a long moment, Obi-Wan wondered if he had even noticed his presence. It seemed as if Anakin had retreated so far into himself that he might not even feel Obi-Wan’s steady pull through the Force. But Obi-Wan felt it—every ounce of Anakin’s vulnerability, every silent cry for comfort, every fracture that was deepening.

Obi-Wan’s feet moved before his mind could even fully register the decision. He was at Anakin’s side in seconds, unsure of what exactly to do but driven by the undeniable need to do something— anything to ease the burden on the young man before him. His hand hovered over Anakin’s shoulder, uncertain whether the touch would be welcomed or shied away from. 

There were so many words crowded in Obi-Wan’s throat like starfighters jammed in a hanger. He wanted to speak of duty, of love, of how he failed them both. He wanted to ask why, wanted to understand, but every carefully forged sentence shattered under the weight of a single, aching truth, and when his lips finally moved, all that emerged was a trembling whisper: “Anakin… may I hold you?”

The question hung in the air, fragile and exposed, like a confession. Obi-Wan knew how rare it was for Anakin to let anyone close, let alone in such a vulnerable moment. He could feel the unease, the hesitation that pulsed through the Force like a static charge. But the truth was, Obi-Wan couldn’t stand to see him like this, not this small, this broken.

Anakin’s body went stiff at the sound of his voice, as if the words had pulled him from his reverie. Slowly, his head turned, eyes wet and wide, as though surprised by the simple request. The soft vulnerability in his face cut Obi-Wan like a blade, and before he could second-guess himself, he knelt beside him.

He wasn’t sure what to expect. He wasn’t sure if Anakin would draw away, the distance they had always kept between them suddenly too great, or if, for once, he might find some comfort in this. But Obi-Wan had learned, Anakin had taught him, that sometimes silence spoke louder than anything. Sometimes, it wasn’t the grand speeches or the advice that cut through the darkness, it was the presence of someone who wouldn’t turn away, no matter how dark the storm. So he waited, breath caught, heart pounding in his chest, ready to give Anakin whatever he needed.

Anakin moved, it was subtle at first, a slight shift in his body, a barely perceptible tension that pulled him closer. Before Obi-Wan could even react, Anakin’s arms were around him, and he found himself enveloping his Padawan in a tight, instinctive embrace. The moment Anakin’s head came to rest against his chest, Obi-Wan felt the weight of it all, the quiet sobs, the shattered composure, the tremors of a boy who had carried too much alone for far too long.

Obi-Wan’s arms encircled him without hesitation, pulling Anakin in against the warmth of his tunic, against the steady rhythm of his heart. He could feel the tears soaking through the fabric, and though they stung like an open wound, Obi-Wan held him tighter, letting Anakin break against him. The tremors shook through Anakin’s body, the weight of everything crashing down, but Obi-Wan never wavered. There was nothing he could say that would ease it, no words that could fill the emptiness, but in this moment, Obi-Wan knew what Anakin needed most was simply to not be alone.

Slowly, Obi-Wan’s hand moved to Anakin’s back, rubbing soothing circles, trying to ground him, to show him that even now, he wasn’t alone.

“It’s all right, Anakin,” Obi-Wan murmured, his voice low and steady. 

Anakin’s sobs only deepened, a soft, broken sound that twisted in Obi-Wan’s chest. He could feel the apology hanging in the air before the words even came, and he let Anakin cry it out, letting him release everything he had kept buried.

“I’m… I’m so sorry, Master,” Anakin choked out, voice muffled against Obi-Wan’s chest. “I... I disappointed you. I should’ve been stronger, I should’ve... I should’ve done better.”

The words broke Obi-Wan’s heart, each one cutting deeper than he could’ve anticipated. He pulled back just enough to cup Anakin’s face, his thumb brushing across the man’s damp cheek, wiping away the tears. His heart clenched painfully as he took in the sight of Anakin like this, broken and vulnerable, like a man who had lost everything. The strength, the brilliance, the fire that had always burned in him, seemed dimmed, flickering, uncertain.

Obi-Wan couldn’t tear his eyes away from Anakin’s face. He felt as though he were seeing him for the first time—not the brash, cocky young man who had always thrown himself into danger without hesitation—but a young man who had suffered far too much and hadn’t known how to ask for help. It was a side of Anakin that he rarely saw, one that Anakin kept hidden behind walls of arrogance and strength, but now, all those walls were gone, leaving only the raw, trembling soul beneath.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan whispered, his voice firm but gentle. He looked directly into his Padawan’s eyes, searching for the pain that was so raw and visible there. “You’ve never disappointed me. Do you hear me? You could never disappoint me.”

Anakin’s eyes were wide, red-rimmed with the weight of everything he had felt and kept inside for so long. There was confusion in them, a flicker of disbelief that Obi-Wan could truly mean what he was saying.

“Master, I—” Anakin began, voice breaking as if he couldn’t fully comprehend what was being said to him.

“I’m not disappointed, Anakin,” Obi-Wan repeated, his voice soft but resolute. “You’ve made mistakes. You’ve done things I wish you hadn’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re my Padawan, and I’m proud of you. I’ve always been proud of you, even when it was difficult to show.”

Anakin’s voice trembled, raw and fragile, as if each word was a weight too heavy to carry. “I’m not your Padawan anymore. I don’t deserve… I can’t be your Padawan anymore.” His words broke Obi-Wan’s heart all over again, and his chest tightened as though he could physically feel the distance Anakin was pushing between them—an invisible wall of guilt and regret.

Before Obi-Wan could speak, Anakin gently took his hand, guiding it toward the side of his head where the familiar, now absent, braid used to rest. Obi-Wan's fingers brushed over the smooth, bare skin, and a sharp pang shot through his chest. The braid had been such a small thing, yet it had carried the weight of years—a cord of tradition, of loyalty, of shared laughter on long hyperspace flights, of the unspoken promise between Master and Padawan. Now it was gone, just like the connection they once shared. 

Obi-Wan inhaled sharply, the weight of Anakin’s sorrow pressing down on him like a suffocating cloud. He swallowed, trying to steady his breathing, but the knot in his throat made it hard to speak. Obi-Wan had started the braid with his own hands when Anakin first started his journey to be a Jedi. Later, when Anakin had been old enough, Obi-Wan had patiently corrected him as he fumbled with the strands of unruly hair, both of them laughing at the crooked attempts until the braid lay neat and perfect. Now, with that absence pressing so heavily against them, Obi-Wan realized just how much that small, seemingly insignificant ritual had meant.

“No, Anakin…” Obi-Wan’s voice broke as he gently cupped Anakin’s face, lifting it so their gazes could meet. His heart twisted painfully as he saw the emptiness in his Padawan’s eyes, the belief that he had lost everything, that he wasn’t worthy of anything, not even the title of Padawan.

“You’re still my Padawan,” Obi-Wan whispered fiercely, his words sharp with conviction. “The braid… the braid can be regrown. You will always be my Padawan, no matter what you think, no matter what’s happened.”

Anakin’s shoulders shook against Obi-Wan’s chest, a quiet sob escaping him, and he felt it like a knife to his own heart, twisting with every ragged breath. Obi-Wan drew him closer, feeling the damp heat of tears soaking into his tunic, feeling the young man’s entire frame quaking against his chest.

“Even if the braid can be regrown,” Anakin said, voice hoarse and shaking, “the bond is gone. I can never have it back. That… that was part of my price.”

Obi-Wan stilled, his heart thudded once, hard, then again, echoing in his ears until it drowned out even the hum of the ship around them. He heard the words clearly; they were crisp, deliberate. Yet despite their clarity, they made no sense. Not to Obi-Wan’s mind. Not at first.

Then, the realization landed cold and merciless, like the vacuum beyond the transparisteel viewport, empty, infinite, and utterly unforgiving. His stomach twisted, leaving only hollowness behind, a void carved out by guilt and dawning horror.

Anakin had made a bargain. A soul-deep sacrifice to Kylo, his mother had returned from death. That miracle had come with a cost, and now, in the ornate Naboo cruiser, surrounded by luxury and excess, Obi-Wan realized what Anakin had surrendered.

His bond. Their bond, the living thread of connection between them, cut, offered willingly, to pay for a miracle that should never have been possible. Obi-Wan drew in a slow breath, as though speaking the next words might shatter what little was left between them.

“Your mother,” he began, cautiously, as though approaching a wounded beast, “On Naboo, I met her. She showed me what happened on Tatooine—the night she died.”

Anakin went rigid in his arms, every muscle drawn taut as a bowstring. The implication settled heavily between them. Obi-Wan kept his voice soft, unwilling to startle him further. “Anakin,” he said carefully, “I need to understand… why a bargain with Kylo was the only path you saw.”

For a moment, Obi-Wan thought there would be no answer at all. Only the sound of the ship’s subtle systems ticking and hissing around them, the ambient hum of hyperspace. Anakin’s jaw clenched hard. His eyes locked onto the intricate weave of the carpet beneath their feet, lashes low and unmoving, casting long shadows across his face. He wouldn’t look up. Yet the Force betrayed him—broadcasting that tightly coiled anguish, that restless grief folded in on itself so many times it had become part of his bones.

“You saw what I did on Tatooine,” Anakin said at last, his voice low and frayed at the edges, “and then after Geonosis too, I was drowning. Pain… guilt… rage. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. All I could see was my mother—and how close I came to losing you, too.”

He swallowed, his throat working, still refusing to look up. “That’s when I remembered what Kylo offered. What he promised. I tried to forget it.” His words fell like stones, each one striking Obi-Wan squarely in the chest. “Then, I heard him, in my mind. Showing me things only I could know… things I… things I would someday do, falling to the dark side, all the horror and destruction I would cause. A name drowned in blood. The face of Vader staring back at me.””

Obi-Wan’s hold tightened instinctively, as though anchoring Anakin in this moment, refusing to let him slip back into that vision. A chill went through him, Hux had given Obi-Wan a brief rundown of Anakin’s history as Vader, but his knowledge had been limited. Somehow, impossibly, Kylo had been able to show Anakin his own damnation.

“I didn’t want to become that… thing,” Anakin said, barely above a whisper. “But it would’ve been so easy. Too easy. My mom—she was already gone. If I lost you too, Master… there would’ve been nothing left in the light for me.”

Anakin’s gaze finally lifted, his blue eyes glinting in the low light, and for a heartbeat Obi-Wan felt he could only see the endless depth of resolve in them.

“So, I asked for everything, Master,” he said, voice thick but steady. “I asked for my mother’s life to be restored. I asked for the Sith to be destroyed before they could poison everything. I asked for the Jedi Order to survive what’s coming. I asked for you… to live, no matter what I became.”

Obi-Wan’s breath caught, and for a moment he could only stare at Anakin, the words hanging in the air like stars in the sky. His fingers trembled where they still rested against Anakin’s temple, feeling the faint tremor beneath it. 

“Anakin,” he said at last, the name breaking in the middle, his voice rough with disbelief. “The future is not written in stone, what Kylo showed you, those visions, that’s only a possibility, not certainty. Tell me, please , I need to know what you gave up, what did you trade away so blindly for your request?”

“Our bond… for my mother’s life.” Anakin’s voice cracked as he spoke, raw with feeling, but he forced them out, staring straight into Obi-Wan’s eyes. “My future, everything I might have been, everything I could’ve had, not just the one that Kylo showed me. I gave it all up, so that you… so that all of you could live.”

Obi-Wan’s gaze locked on his Padawan’s, unblinking, unwavering, as though he could hold Anakin together by will alone. “Anakin,” he whispered, the name tasting of ash. “You… foolish, noble boy.” He forced himself to swallow, to breathe, but his chest felt tight as a durasteel vice. “You think you can barter with your soul as if it were a handful of credits? As if you can trade your future like some… trinket?” His voice cracked sharply, raw emotion bleeding through. 

Anakin opened his mouth, but Obi-Wan didn’t let him speak—not yet. “Listen to me. If this—if what you’re saying is true—then you’ve been lied to.” His gaze bored into Anakin’s with almost painful intensity. “No power in the galaxy that asks this of you is on your side. Not the Force. Not destiny. Certainly not whatever shadow made you believe this was the only way.”

“I don’t care who holds the other end of your bargain, or who stood there to witness it. I don’t care if it was sworn in darkness, sealed in blood, or shouted to the stars themselves.” Obi-Wan’s voice dropped, low and fierce, each word cutting the air like a blade. “I will undo this deed. I will break this vow. I will set you free.”

“Do you hear me?” Obi-Wan’s voice shook from the weight of a promise he would sooner die than break. “No power in this galaxy, no phantom master or faceless hand, will keep you bound while I yet live. Whatever chain they’ve wound around you, I will shatter it, link by link, even if I have to tear it from you with my own hands.”

His voice fell almost to a whisper, though the intensity in it did not dim. “If there is truly no undoing this, if this burden cannot be lifted… then I will bear it with you. No—” his voice hardened, eyes flashing, “I will bear it for you.”

Anakin didn’t so much as flinch. He let Obi-Wan’s words wash over him without acknowledgment, his face unnervingly still. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and flat, every syllable a blade drawn across the silence.

“I’ll kill you too, one day,” he said, not looking at him. “Just like I killed my mother.”

The words landed with terrible precision, cutting deeper for the utter lack of emotion behind them. Obi-Wan felt them strike his chest like a physical blow, leaving him momentarily hollow, his breath caught somewhere between denial and despair.

“I’ve never stopped thinking about my mother,” Anakin said at last, his voice unnervingly steady even as a faint tremor rippled through his frame. “Since the day I left Tatooine, I’ve feared what became of her, what might have happened while I was gone.” His gaze remained fixed somewhere distant, unfocused, as if replaying visions only he could see. “For weeks, I dreamed of her… the agony, the chains, the torment she endured. I felt every moment of it as if it were happening to me.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and his breath came sharp through his nose, but still he pressed on, words spilling like poison he had carried too long. “My fear—my darkness—it clung to her. It twisted everything inside me until I believed it, until I made it real.”

“Anakin—no.” Obi-Wan said, the panic and horror seeping into his words. “You didn’t do this. You couldn’t have. The Force does not work that way.” 

“I did.” Anakin’s reply came quiet but unyielding, his gaze fixed and burning, like twin embers refusing to die out. “You don’t understand, Master, I saw it in her—in my mother. My darkness wrapped around her like a shroud. My darkness didn’t just follow her—it reached out, it found her, it killed her. Even across the galaxy, I was able to hurt her, and given enough time…” His voice dipped, almost a whisper, but the conviction behind it made Obi-Wan’s stomach twist. “…I would have been able to do the same to you.”

His breathing came fast now, ragged, every word trembling with a fury that felt less like anger than grief too sharp to name. “I didn’t have to swing a lightsaber or raise a hand. All I had to do was exist as I am—and she died. Do you still think the Force won’t let me destroy you, too?”

Obi-Wan straightened, forcing his own breath to steady, his fingers firm on Anakin’s shoulder. The panic roiling in his chest found no outlet in his voice; when he spoke, it was calm, almost deceptively so. “No,” he said, eyes locked on Anakin’s. “You are not the sum of your fears, Anakin, no matter how real they feel. The darkness is not your master, unless you kneel to it.”

The words carried no tremor, no hesitation. He met the fury in Anakin’s gaze head-on, refusing to look away, even as the Force around them thrummed with a volatile energy, a storm waiting for one misstep to break loose.

Anakin shook his head violently, almost tearing free of Obi-Wan’s grasp, though he didn’t quite pull away. “How do you bear that, Master? How do you take on a darkness that’s already poisoned me? You can’t cleanse this. You can’t undo it. I don’t deserve your promise, or your faith.”

Anakin swallowed hard, blinking rapidly, but the tears still welled up, glinting in the dim light. “I have already made my peace, the deal has been made, and If given the choice again… I would still do it again.”

Obi-Wan’s hands tightened on Anakin’s shoulders, his composure cracking like glass under strain. “You would do it again?” His voice was sharp now, almost incredulous, cutting through the air like a whip. “You damn fool. Do you even hear yourself? You think sacrificing everything—your future, your soul—makes you strong?”

He gave Anakin a rough shake, just enough to make him meet his eyes. “You think I would want this? That I would ever ask this of you? I would rather fall a thousand times than see you trade yourself away piece by piece.” Obi-Wan’s voice was rising, tight with anguish. “You call it noble, but it isn’t. It’s self-destruction dressed up as duty.”

Anakin jerked back, wrenching free of Obi-Wan’s grasp with a sudden, violent motion that left the air between them trembling. The movement was sharp enough to send the hem of his tunic whipping at his knees, sharp enough to make Obi-Wan’s hands hang uselessly in midair for a moment. Anakin’s eyes burned—not just with tears now, but with a furious, molten light that made him look older, harsher, like someone Obi-Wan barely recognized.

“Don’t you dare judge me!” The shout cracked through the room like a blaster shot, his voice ringing against the walls, trembling with emotion so raw it almost sounded like pain. “Don’t stand there and pretend you wouldn’t have done the same. If it were me dying, if it were the Jedi falling, if it were Master Qui-Gon screaming for help—you’d have torn the galaxy apart to save them!”

His hands clenched at his sides, the cords of muscle in his forearms standing out as he fought to keep them from shaking. “You’d have made the same bargain, Obi-Wan. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t. Don’t you dare tell me you’d have just stood there and let them all burn because it was ‘the will of the Force.’”

Anakin stepped forward, boots grinding against the floor with deliberate weight, until he stood almost nose to nose with Obi-Wan. His breath came ragged and hot between them, every muscle in his body coiled tight, his whole frame trembling with rage that barely hid the desperation underneath. “So don’t talk to me about self-destruction,” he spat, voice low now, harsh as a vibroblade’s edge. “Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t have done the same if it meant saving me.”

For a long moment, neither of them moved. Obi-Wan's lips parted, but no answer came—only the faint hum of the ship around them and the rapid thrum of his heart in his ears.

His breath caught like a snare tightening around his ribs, leaving him momentarily unable to speak. Anakin’s words hung in the air, fierce and scorching. He stared into those blazing eyes—eyes he had seen alight with triumph, laughter, and anger so many times before—but never like this. This was not the righteous heat of a young man railing against injustice; this was something deeper, sharper, burning with a conviction that frightened Obi-Wan to his core.

He wanted to deny it outright, to fling the accusation back and tell Anakin he was wrong, that Obi-Wan would never make such a bargain, never gamble his soul on some nameless promise. But the words wouldn’t come, because deep down—down in that quiet, dangerous place where honesty lurked, he knew Anakin was right.

If it had been Anakin lying broken and dying, could he truly say he would have stood still? Could he truly swear he would have bowed to the will of the Force, serene and detached, and let the galaxy burn? The truth curdled in his throat like poison.

His silence spoke louder than words. Anakin saw it, the fury in his eyes softened for an instant, replaced by something far worse: vindication, laced with despair. “You can’t say it,” Anakin whispered, almost triumphantly, almost pleading. “Because you know I’m right.”

“Yes.” The admission landed like a whisper of thunder, soft but devastating. Anakin blinked, faltering just for an instant, uncertainty flickering like static in the broken bond Obi-Wan still reached for, despite everything. “If it were you, if it were your life hanging by a thread, if it were you bleeding out beneath my hands, I would have broken every oath, shattered every law. I would have burned worlds to ash before I let you slip away.”

The confession ripped out of him, raw and bloody, and for the first time in years Obi-Wan let himself feel the truth of it, let it sear him to the bone. He took a step forward, closing the space Anakin had tried to claim with his fury, until the heat of their breath mingled between them.

“But listen to me, Anakin,” Obi-Wan continued, voice gathering force, steady as a blade drawn for battle. “There is a difference—a chasm wider than all the stars—between what I might have done and what you did do. Because I would not have paid with you. ” His hand shot out, fingers curling hard around Anakin’s forearm, not to restrain but to anchor, to drag him back from the edge he was teetering on. “I would have given myself to the fire. I would have burned in your place, without hesitation. But I would never— never —have handed over your soul to the darkness, not for any price, not even to save the galaxy.”

Obi-Wan’s breath shook, but he didn’t let go. His voice softened suddenly, ragged at the edges, trembling like a blade barely sheathed. “If you had asked me—just asked—I would have stood with you. I would have taken the burden, Anakin. Not because I am your Master. Because I am yours, as you are mine.”

Anakin flinched—not only at the words themselves, but at the raw, unvarnished truth in them. For a long, shuddering moment he couldn’t meet Obi-Wan’s eyes, his own gaze darting away, fixing on the far wall as if it held the answers he couldn’t bear to find in his Master’s face. His throat worked once, twice, and when he finally spoke, his voice was a rasp torn thin by grief.

“You don’t understand,” he whispered, and this time there was no heat in it, only hollow resignation, an emptiness that chilled Obi-Wan more than any rage. “This wasn’t a bargain struck in anger or pride. It wasn’t some whim I can regret and undo. It’s bound in blood and power older than the Jedi themselves.”

Something in Obi-Wan broke then—not like glass, but like a dam giving way. His grip shifted from Anakin’s forearm to his shoulders, both hands framing the younger man’s face with a gentleness that belied the storm raging in his chest. His voice, when it came, was a low, shaking growl, fierce as a vow etched in fire.

“Then hear me, Anakin Skywalker, and let the galaxy bear witness: whatever shadow you’ve sworn to, whatever darkness coils around your soul, it will not have you. Not while I draw breath. I will not surrender you—not to fate, not to the Force, not to any phantom that dares lay claim to you.” His thumbs brushed against Anakin’s tear-streaked cheeks, steady despite the tremor in his own hands. “If you have given yourself to the abyss, then I will follow you in. I will drag you back if I have to tear down the stars themselves to do it.”

For a heartbeat, the only sound in the room was their ragged breathing, the low hum of the ship’s engines thrumming through the chamber. Then, with a sound that was half a sob, half a broken laugh, Anakin collapsed forward, his forehead pressing hard against Obi-Wan’s shoulder as though the weight of his own grief had finally crushed him.

And Obi-Wan held him—held him as if by sheer force of will he could keep the darkness at bay, as if arms alone could bind together what fate and folly had tried to tear apart. He didn’t know how they would undo this. He didn’t know if it could be undone. But he knew this: as long as he lived, Anakin would not face the darkness alone.

—-

Hux had claimed the grandest cabin aboard the cruiser, a chamber lavish enough to shame an Imperial throne room. The bed alone was absurdly vast, its frame chased with ornate filigree. Where his quarters aboard the Finalizer had been all sharp lines, sterile gloss, and functional austerity, this suite reeked of excess. The walls gleamed with polished durasteel paneling, a Naboo crest etched in delicate relief across its surface like an aristocrat’s signature. A painting, of all things, graced one wall: the rolling hills and glassy lakes of Varykino rendered in sun-washed oils.

It had taken only a moment to strip Ren of his robes and tunics once he lay sprawled on the massive bed. Against the sable sheets, his skin looked ghost-pale, luminous even—familiar yet altered. A year apart had left its mark in the form of new scars, pale slashes and crescents, each an unspoken history. Hux’s fingers lingered over them, tracing their path like cartographer’s lines, before he reluctantly left for the fresher.

He stopped short at the threshold. Sunken into the deck, as if this were a Naboo villa rather than a cruiser, was a full bathing pool inlaid with black stone veined in gold. He had no doubt that if he twisted the elegant bronze fixtures, steaming water would gush forth, perfumed and ready. The thought of sharing it—of Ren languid and submerged, steam beading on his skin—was distracting enough to make Hux scowl at his own imagination. He shook it off and began searching for a medkit.

Every cabinet he opened was an affront. Polished chrome hinges gave way to gleaming rows of products: fine oils in etched crystal vials, soaps stacked like gemstones, salves and tonics worthy of a Naboo senator’s private spa. Even the medkit, when at last he found it, was excessive, packed not for utility but for luxury, every tool cushioned in velvet and every vial labeled in gilt. Still, Hux could hardly complain when Ren was the one bleeding on the bed.

Returning to the main chamber, Hux seated himself on the edge of the mattress, its surface barely dipping under his weight. With deliberate precision, he unlatched the medkit and set the case open, surveying its contents. He bypassed the sterile bacta pads entirely, reaching instead for a jar of concentrated bacta gel, an excuse, if he was honest, to let his fingers wander Ren’s skin under the guise of treatment.

And damn him, Ren made it too easy. Even unconscious, sprawled carelessly as if he owned the galaxy, he looked every inch the dark myth he pretended not to be. The low lighting of the chamber cast sharp-edged shadows across his body, tracing the contours of sculpted shoulder blades and a back built like it had been carved from marble.

Hux’s fingers hovered, then descended—deft, practiced, but unable to remain purely clinical. He let them linger a fraction too long on each wound, pressing just enough to feel the torn edges of skin, the heat still radiating from bruises not yet cooled. He catalogued the injuries with a surgeon’s precision, but each breath he took was a silent effort to quell the rising heat of thought—the memory of motion, the suggestion of strength, the ridiculous, infuriating grace that clung to Ren even in this ragged state.

He tamped it all down, kept his expression as smooth as glass. But his hands knew better. His hands remembered.

“I know you’re awake, Ren,” Hux said, keeping his voice cool, measured, even as his fingers faltered for the briefest heartbeat before resuming their precise work. He’d felt it immediately, the subtle hitch in Ren’s breathing, the thrum of his pulse echoing in the stillness of the cabin. That faint, instinctive tell, infuriatingly intimate.

“You’re lucky I set the blaster to stun.” The words came quieter, almost unguarded, and Hux despised the slip, that treacherous note of vulnerability threading through his tone. He wanted his voice to be durasteel, not this—whatever this was.

Ren, giving up all pretense of still being unconscious, tried to push himself up, but Hux pressed firmly between his shoulder blades to hold him down, unwilling to let him aggravate his wounds. But in all honesty, he could not bear to face Ren just yet. The thought of what he’d done to Ren, what he allowed to happen, the scar Hux had allowed to be placed on Ren’s face, made something twist in his chest. 

“How are you here?” Ren muttered under his breath, barely loud enough for Hux to hear. His voice was rough, like he hadn’t used it in days.

“I should be the one asking you that.” Hux replied, his fingers tracing idle lines along Ren’s shoulders and back, the contact deliberate and damning. “One moment I was in the old Imperial palace on Coruscant… and the next, I was in the Jedi Temple.” 

Ren only muttered an “oh,” but Hux felt the shift in him, his mind reeling with calculations. 

Without thinking, his hand brushed through Ren’s hair. Hux almost froze, surprised by his own impulse. He had always avoided moments like this, always demanded Ren leave immediately once their mutual needs had been satisfied. It had made it easier to hate Ren, made it easier to see him only as the murderer of Ben Organa-Solo. Yet now… he couldn’t stop himself. Ren had always displayed signs of liking Hux playing with Ren’s hair even though he never officially said it aloud. He always seemed to take everything Hux would give him, even if it was painful, treating each moment between them like it was precious. 

“Ren..I..” Hux’s voice came again, this time hesitant, “I owe you an apology.”

The words tasted like ash, but they had to be spoken. Hux had held his tongue for too long, wrapped himself in cold precision until even he believed the mask. But not now. Not with Ren trembling beneath his hand, not when Hux could feel the ripples of his own emotions leaking into the Force despite every shield he’d built.

“Don’t,” Ren snapped, sharp as a vibroblade.

Hux’s hand stilled, the rejection stung more than it should have, and he moved back instinctively. The space between them felt cavernous, a gulf he had carved himself with years of coldness and betrayal. It was a punishment he had earned, every inch of it, and yet it still hurt. Of course Ren didn’t want to listen— why should he? After everything Hux had done, after every betrayal, every order and every cruel word, why should Ren suffer him now? 

He shifted to the edge of the bed with mechanical precision, spine ramrod straight, turning his back to Ren so the flicker of pain in his eyes would remain unseen. Speaking now felt less like a conversation and more like a confession whispered aloud to the room, but it didn’t matter. If Ren struck him down when he was finished, so be it. Death would be cleaner than the slow bleed of guilt he now carried.

“Ren, let me finish what I need to say.” His voice, for all its softness, carried urgency. His fingers twisted the lid of the bacta jar closed with deliberate force, as though anchoring himself to something tangible before the storm within could sweep him away.

Ren didn’t move, but the low hum he gave was enough — the smallest sound, yet it carried all the weight of judgment. It wasn’t permission so much as indulgence, the kind a sovereign might grant a condemned man who asked to speak a final word before the blade fell. 

He had imagined this conversation a thousand ways, rehearsed it in corridors, on starships, in the lonely quiet of deep-space travel. He’d crafted his words with the same precision he once reserved for First Order speeches, practicing each variation like a ritual. A year. A full year since Starkiller had fallen and Han Solo, of all people, had shattered his world with five simple words: Ben Organa-Solo isn’t dead.

A year since he’d confronted Leia Organa, raw with betrayal. A year of chasing shadows through the galaxy, trying to untangle truth from smoke. And now, here he was—sitting next to the man he thought he'd lost, the man he thought he hated—his throat thick, his practiced speeches ash.

Hux drew a slow, steadying breath, shoulders rising and falling with the weight of it. When he spoke again, his voice was rough, hoarse with emotion. “I know you think I love Ben Organa-Solo and that I hate you. That I wanted to kill you.”

“I was wrong,” Hux confessed. There was no pride in the admission, no arrogance, just bare truth. “I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was stupid, blind, fed lies… and that doesn’t excuse a damn thing. I hurt you beyond forgiveness, and you should have killed me on Ilum.”

“I don’t know why the Force brought me here,” Hux continued, the words coming slower now, like he was fighting to control the emotions threatening to break through. “But I need you to know… how much I love you. The boy you were, the man you have become, each and every part of you, regardless of what name you choose, I will always love you.”

The confession hung in the room like charged air before a lightning strike. Ren went still, utterly still, and Hux could almost hear the furious pounding of his heart. The heat radiating off him was unbearable, and Hux desperately wanted to close the last inches between them, to destroy the wall they’d built from years of mistrust and betrayal.

“I’m sorry,” Hux whispered again, and this time his voice cracked. “I’m so sorry for everything.”

He closed his eyes like a condemned man awaiting the stroke of the executioner’s blade, breath held taut in his chest. The words were out now, cast into Ren’s hands. He had done the only thing left to do, and all that remained was to await judgment. He would not hope, he didn’t deserve to hope, that anything between them could be salvaged. Even he knew it was far too late. And yet, against all reason, a part of him clung desperately to the thought of staying at Ren’s side. Even if the love was dead, even if the relationship between them lay in ashes, Hux would give himself over to him in any form Ren would allow.

No answer came. Behind him, Ren seemed to ignore the confession entirely, as though Hux had spoken into a void. The silence bit deep, and Hux could feel the tears threatening to fall from his eyes. He folded his arms tight around himself, as though he could hold his body still by force alone, but the tremors broke through, betraying him.

The silence stretched on, an eternity suspended in the ornate chamber. The soft thrum of the cruiser’s engines hummed beneath the floor, the faint glimmer of the Naboo crest on the polished wall catching what little light there was, as if mocking his misery with its serene elegance. Hux waited, every heartbeat a lash.

At last, he heard movement, the shift of weight against the bed, the rustle of fabric. Ren rolled away from him, wordless, deliberate, and Hux opened his eyes just in time to watch him rise. The room seemed to dim around him as Ren crossed the expanse of polished floor toward the carved desk where Hux had folded his robes with absurd care. Silent, back turned, Ren dressed in smooth, economical motions, fastening each layer as though sealing himself off piece by piece. Hux could not look away from the long lines of his back, from the deliberate indifference of every gesture, from the inevitability of his departure. He watched Ren retrieve his outer cloak, watched the black fabric settle on his shoulders like nightfall — and then, without a word, watched him leave.

Chapter 8

They stopped on a forgotten backwater world in the Outer Rim to refuel, a lonely outpost adrift at the edge of known space, its horizon scoured by sienna-colored clouds. The brief pause had given Kylo a chance to put distance, however fragile, between himself and Hux. It had taken every shred of willpower to walk out of that room, to leave behind the one thing he’d secretly craved to hear all his life, Hux’s unguarded confession. 

Kylo still didn’t know how he’d torn himself off that bed, when every instinct screamed to drag Hux down beside him and drown in that rare honesty and ravish him. Instead, Hux’s words were cast into the void, offered to the Force itself, where they vanished like breath on the wind. What once might have sustained Kylo now felt weightless, slipping away into endless darkness.

He let the meager market surrounding the refueling station occupy his thoughts, wandering its narrow lanes beneath tattered awnings, scanning cluttered stalls for anything resembling a lightsaber component. He told himself he’d made his peace. He told himself this with the same brittle certainty of a man repeating a lie until it frays. And yet here was Hux, somehow, miraculously in Anakin’s timeline with Kylo instead of where he should be, safe in a future with Ben Organa-Solo. 

Hux didn’t belong here—not with this version of him, the broken remnants of a man forged in fury and failure. Not in the presence of a man whose hands were stained with choices too dark to erase, whose every step seemed marked by destruction. Hux deserved something different, something purer. A version of Kylo untouched by the chaos that now defined him.

Hux deserved a man who looked at him as if he were the entire galaxy, a man who saw the light in him. Someone who listened to his every word, hanging on them like sacred scripture, as if Hux’s thoughts alone could shape the fate of stars. He deserved a love that was a sanctuary, a quiet place where his soul could rest without the ever-present shadow of violence. Someone who met his touch with tenderness, not desperation; who gave without taking; who was whole and hopeful, not fractured and broken. Someone untouched by fire. Someone who never became Kylo Ren.

Kylo needed to speak with Orshool. Needed answers for the questions hammering at the inside of his skull, fracturing thought from thought. But the holocron remained mute in his pocket, a silent, gleaming weight, as if mocking him for every unanswered question and every step that had only led him deeper into uncertainty.

He finally spotted a component that might serve his purpose, Kylo lifted his hand toward the stall owner, ready to simply take it with the Force, only to feel a firm hand clamp onto his forearm. Obi-Wan stepped forward smoothly, placing credits in the merchant’s palm before Kylo could act, then turned to him with a voice edged in command.

“We need to talk.”

The words left no room for argument. Kylo watched Obi-Wan’s retreating back, head tilted slightly, unsure whether to follow. The component still rested cold in his palm, though his thoughts were far from it. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ben Kenobi, the man whose name his mother had given him as a birthright, was nothing like the figure Kylo had spent years forging in the quiet furnace of his mind. The “Ben” Leia spoke of in rare, wistful fragments was a man of impossible wisdom, a calm guardian with a steady hand and a voice like tempered steel. Kylo had imagined him a phantom carved from duty and light, some flawless Jedi saint whose very existence had made Luke Skywalker’s childhood safer than his own. A man he could blame for walking away when the galaxy went dark, a man to hate for abandoning his grandfather. 

But this Obi-Wan, younger, still burning with the restless certainty of youth, was not the living monument Kylo expected. Obi-Wan was sharper, more dangerous than Kylo anticipated, all precise lines and quick judgments, still burning with the conviction that the Jedi Code answered every question worth asking. Kylo could see it in his stance. This was Kenobi at the start of the Clone Wars, the man who still believed in the Republic, who still believed the Senate could be saved. The man before Anakin’s fall.

For Kylo, that was disorienting. He had prepared himself to meet a legend — someone to resent or to admire, but not to understand . What stood before him was no distant paragon, no myth cast in light. He was flesh and blood, fallible, still untested in the ways the war would soon break him. Not a savior. Not a saint. Just another man standing at the edge of a cliff, too blind to see how close he already was to falling.

“Ren?”

Kylo looked up, dragged out of his reverie. Anakin and Hux approached, arms full of supplies, both dressed in muted Chandrilan inner robes scavenged from the cruiser. They had wisely discarded the jewel-toned jackets, but the soft draping of pale cloth, meant to flatter warmer complexions, drained what little color remained in Hux’s face. The robes only served to draw attention to his reddened eyes, raw and rimmed as though scoured by sleepless hours, though his posture remained as stiff and imperious as ever, a man still clinging to armor of command even as the steel beneath it bent.

Kylo looked away first, nodding slightly towards Obi-Wan’s back, “Let’s go.”

As he followed Obi-Wan, Kylo could feel the harsh stare of Hux boring into his back. He desperately wanted to turn around and take Hux in a warm embrace, to trade all his brittle resolve for the simplest, most human comfort. Instead, he kept moving, his boots striking the dust-hardened ground in an unwavering rhythm.

They crossed the ramshackle market in silence, weaving past sputtering vendor droids and stalls draped with frayed canvas that snapped in the wind. The air reeked of coolant and scorched metal, underscored by the acrid sweetness of exotic fruits rotting in the midday sun. Dust devils chased themselves across the duracrete path, clinging to their boots like they didn’t want to let go.

The landing pad opened before them, a slab of duracrete that bled pale light through the hazy sky. The cruiser loomed at its edge surrounded by crates, its hull gleaming faintly as if it disdained the grime of this forgotten world. Obi-Wan stood at the base of the boarding ramp with his arms folded, his robes stirring in the slight breeze. He looked less like a Jedi Knight and more like a schoolmaster ready to mete out discipline, waiting not for explanations but for confessions.

The three men slowed without meaning to. They spread out automatically, each taking a subtle, strategic angle, their spacing precise as if choreographed — a formation born not of planning but instinct. For a moment it felt absurdly like one of the old holo-dramas Han used to show Kylo as a child, that electric hush just before the first blaster bolt is fired. No one moved. No one blinked. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath, carrying the faint tang of ionized fuel from the refueling ports.

The faint hum of the cruiser’s power core vibrated through the duracrete landing beneath their boots, underscoring the tension like a single, droning note. A mynock skittered across an overhead cable and took flight at the sound of its own wings. In that charged stillness, every heartbeat felt too loud, every glance too sharp, as if the Force itself was waiting to see who would draw first.

“I cleared the Jedi ship’s navigation logs. It’s already on its way back to the Temple.” Obi-Wan spoke, his tone was clipped, but his eyes were sharper still.

“Master Billaba has confirmed,” he went on, “the Senate will vote in two standard cycles to grant emergency powers to the Chancellor."

“Then we return to Coruscant,” Kylo said flatly. “We deal with the Sith first.”

Obi-Wan’s gaze flicked to him, quick and silent, but it landed with the weight of a question unspoken. In the stillness that followed, something imperceptible shifted between them—subtle, yet unmistakable. The air thickened, not just with heat, but with the oppressive weight of revelation. It was as if the Force itself had paused, holding its breath.

“The one Dooku warned of,” Obi-Wan murmured, his voice now edged with steel. “The shadow pulling every string from within the Senate. The phantom no one sees because everyone already serves it.”

Kylo inhaled slowly. He had tread carefully with Anakin, measuring every word, every omission, and now, it seemed, he would have to do the same with Obi-Wan. There were truths still veiled, pieces not yet played, but this one—they all had to hear it.

“The one who’s been shaping Anakin all these years, the one who left his mark on him,” Kylo said, voice devoid of triumph, as calm and cold as a blade laid against the throat. “Darth Sidious.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes went wide, a sharp break in his carefully controlled composure. The flicker of shock wasn’t subtle, it cut through his Jedi calm like a blade through silk. He turned on Anakin so quickly that the hem of his robe whipped around his boots, dust swirling at his feet. The young knight stood frozen, as though rooted to the landing pad, every muscle taut. His expression was raw, stripped bare of the bravado he wore like armor.

Anakin’s mouth opened, but no words came, only a small, rasping sound in the back of his throat. The midday sun caught his face at an angle, carving his features into sharp planes of disbelief. The blue of his eyes, usually so bright with heat and restless ambition, was clouded, not with anger this time, but with something colder and far more dangerous: denial.

“I felt it,” Kylo said, voice low and weighted, “that night I first met you, the darkness pressing against you. It was you, yes, but it wasn’t only you. There was something else coiling around you, feeding on you, gathering your anger, your fear.” 

“Explain.” Anakin’s voice was tight now, the calm veneer cracking under strain, his eyes locked on Kylo. “Explain it to me now.”

Kylo’s gaze slid to him, calm and unflinching, but there was something dangerous behind his stillness, something that made air around them swirl, as though resonating with his pulse. “I told you that your manifestations with the dark side may have brought on your mother’s death. But there’s also a shadow following you,” Kylo said. “Not just following, but woven through you and enhancing your manifestations. I don’t know how, but I know it when I feel it.”

“Who is Sidious?” Anakin shot back, anger and confusion twisting together. “Who is he?”

Kylo arched a brow, and for an instant there was something almost mocking in his expression. “Didn’t you listen to your master? Use your brain, Anakin. He practically told you.”

The Force pressed down on the landing pad, thick and restless, like the air before a lightning strike. Kylo could feel it vibrating in his bones, thrumming against the half-healed wounds under his robes. It tasted acrid on his tongue, anger, fear, disbelief all tangled together, the raw scent of a storm about to break.

A beat passed, then two, and the realization began to rise behind Anakin’s eyes like the slow, terrible ascent of a stormcloud. His breathing changed, shallower now, a tremor beneath the surface. His hands flexed at his sides, curling toward fists.

“Who?” he whispered, but the word was half-formed, as though he already feared the answer.

Kylo stepped forward slightly, not in aggression, but with the slow, inevitable momentum of a stormfront rolling over the horizon. The movement was quiet, deliberate, and yet it changed everything. It was the kind of step that didn’t close distance so much as claim it.

“You’ve known him since Qui-Gon found you on Tatooine, when you first went to Naboo.” he said, eyes glittering, “Think, Anakin. Who has always told you the Council was wrong? Who encouraged your anger while calling it passion ? Who’s been there, gently, patiently, shaping your rise?”

Hux’s gaze cut between them, measuring every breath, every twitch. He looked like a man standing at the edge of someone else’s duel, calculating whether to intervene or let them destroy each other. When he finally spoke, his voice was too even, stripped of everything human, the kind of tone you use when your own pulse is too fast and you refuse to let anyone see it.

“Emperor Palpatine,” Hux said. “Though I suppose… for now, it’s just Chancellor Palpatine.”

Kylo felt the words land like a durasteel weight, rippling through the Force with a low, resonant hum that thrummed against his ribs. The air itself seemed to tighten. Anakin jerked as though someone had driven a fist straight into his chest, his shock flaring so bright in the Force that it stung to touch, like a lightning strike against bare skin.

Kylo hadn’t meant for it to happen like this. Not here. Not now. Not when he had nothing but his own words to stand on. He’d imagined this confrontation differently: controlled, deliberate, armed with irrefutable proof that would leave Anakin no room to deny the truth. He would have led him to the answer step by step, breaking him down carefully, methodically, until the man couldn’t cling to his illusions anymore.

But no. Trust Hux, damn him, to take a quiet blade and swing it like a vibro-axe, hacking through subtlety in a single, perfectly measured sentence.

The truth wasn’t ready to be spoken aloud. Spoken too soon, it became fragile, easy to break. Palpatine’s name wasn’t a weapon yet, not when it was just words falling from someone else’s mouth, unsupported by anything.  Hux, brilliant bastard that he was, had just hurled it like a live grenade into the middle of all of them.

Kylo could already feel Anakin’s panic rising, tangling with his anger until the two were indistinguishable. The younger man’s breath came short, his heart hammering so loud in the Force that it was deafening. Obi-Wan stiffened, trying to smooth his expression into Jedi calm, but Kylo felt the ripple of doubt slide off him like a sudden cross-current. Even the landing pad seemed to respond, a faint, almost imperceptible vibration underfoot, as though the duracrete itself was bracing for impact.

Obi-Wan stared at Hux as though the man had grown another head. “Impossible.” The word was sharp, a reflexive denial that sounded far too much like fear. His voice dropped, barely above a whisper, as if lowering it might make the statement less true. 

Hux stated coolly, his gaze narrowing ever so slightly. He smoothed a crease from the borrowed Chandrilan robes with fastidious care, as though the motion could erase the tremor of tension between them.

Anakin’s breath came fast, his knuckles white as his hands clenching around the supplies he was carrying. “No—he’s… he’s been helping me,” he stammered. “Guiding me. He’s—he’s not—”

Kylo’s voice rose, only slightly, but the sound carried the weight of something ancient and cold. “He’s been guiding you, yes— planting doubts, feeding your anger, pushing you toward the edge so you’ll fall without even knowing it.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Anakin yelled back, his words sharp and ragged. The muscles in his jaw quivering as the Force rippled off him uncontrolled, supplies dropping from his hold.

“I know exactly what I’m talking about!” Kylo screamed, the scattered supplies rattling as if recoiling from his anger. “I know because someone did the same exact thing to me!”

“Ren, enough!” Hux barked, throwing himself between them. His stance was rigid, his voice cracking like a command on the parade ground.

But neither man backed down. Kylo’s breath came sharp and fast, burning in his chest as though he’d been running, though his boots hadn’t moved an inch. The air around him felt heavier now, viscous and charged, every particle of dust alive with energy that made the hair on his arms stand on end. 

Across from him, Anakin trembled with rage, shoulders squared but quivering, the tendons in his neck standing out like cords. His pulse beat so violently in the Force that it wasn’t just something Kylo felt, it was something he heard, a deep percussive pounding like war drums reverberating through the ground. Every beat sent another ripple crashing outward, another hot wave of raw, untempered emotion.

The pressure of it pressed against Kylo’s senses until his own skin prickled and his muscles ached from holding himself steady. It was suffocating, the kind of anger that fills every breath, leaving no room for thought. Yet it wasn’t foreign. It was too familiar. It was the same searing heat that Snoke had shaped and sharpened, whispering promises of greatness if only Ben Organa-Solo would let the anger consume him completely.

“What are you talking about?” Obi-Wan demanded, his gaze snapping to Kylo. “Who did that to you?”

Kylo didn’t answer immediately. His hands tightened on the lightsaber component until the metal groaned. “It doesn’t matter who,” he said finally, his voice low, but still vibrating with fury. “What matters is I can feel it in him. The same corruption. The same hand pushing, pulling, shaping every choice until you can’t tell where you end and he begins.”

Anakin shook his head violently, as though he could physically deny the words. “You’re lying!” he shouted, but this time his voice broke, the sound laced less with rage and more with panic. The Force around him whipped tighter.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan warned sharply, sensing the crack in his control.

Kylo’s expression did not soften. “I’m not lying,” he said coldly, stepping forward a single pace despite Hux’s blocking stance. “You think I don’t recognize it? The weight pressing on your thoughts, the whisper telling you everyone else is holding you back?” His voice hardened, almost breaking into a snarl. “I lived with it. I listened to it. I know what it feels like to be someone else’s weapon.”

Kylo’s presence surged outward like a tide, cold and heavy. Anakin mirrored him unconsciously, shoulders squaring, his fury so bright it almost blistered. They were two storms colliding, lightning sensing lightning.

Anakin lunged first, raw and fast, the kind of reckless speed that spoke of instinct, not training. Kylo moved at the same instant, muscle and anger snapping forward, shoulder low, eyes fixed on his target. Hux was nothing but an obstacle between them, and he went staggering sideways with a strangled curse as they shoved past him.

Kylo’s hand clamped down on Anakin’s forearm, fingers digging deep, and his other shoulder drove forward to break his balance. Anakin shoved back with equal strength, twisting violently, teeth bared, every motion crackling with untrained power that made Kylo’s own muscles shiver with the echo of it.

Obi-Wan was already moving, faster than Kylo expected. His hands clamped down on Anakin’s shoulders with vice-like strength, and the Force flowed through him like tempered steel. He hauled his Padawan backward.

“Enough!” he barked, the word cracking like a whip. But Anakin fought him blindly, fury burning so hot it drowned out reason, every nerve screaming for violence.

Hux recovered and threw himself at Kylo, planting both hands against his chest, forcing him a step back. “Ren!” he snarled. “Stop this now!”

Kylo shoved Hux away with a single brutal push, sending him skidding half a meter across the duracrete until he slammed into the cruiser’s hull. Then the ground shivered. A hairline crack splintered across the landing pad with a faint grinding groan, not from any weapon, but from the pressure of the Force colliding uncontrolled. The stacked crates shuddered and rattled, some rising an inch off the ground before crashing back down.

Kylo barely had time to register the shift before he was slammed backward, against the cool metal of the cruiser’s plating. The impact forced a grunt from him, breath catching in his throat. A crushing weight pinning him against the hull hard enough to send pain flaring through his healing back, and for a second, stars edged his vision.

Across the landing pad, Anakin was flung backward with equal force, the impact ringing out as his body struck a stack of supply crates. The towers of cargo shuddered and rattled, one box toppling and bursting open to spill coils of flex-cable across the ground. The two of them snarled in unison, predators caged, both pinned by the same crushing grip.

Obi-Wan stood between them, rooted to the trembling ramp like a carved pillar. His arms were flung wide, fingers spread and trembling with controlled exertion, every tendon in his neck and shoulder drawn taut. Sweat beaded at his temple, glinting in the sunlight, but his stance didn’t falter. The pressure wasn’t just physical. It pressed inward through the Force, coiling like a vice around Kylo’s limbs, chest, and throat. It felt deliberate, practiced, not the wild shove of a frightened Jedi Padawan but the steady, uncompromising restraint of a master who had held worse foes at bay. The landing pad groaned beneath their boots, tiny pebbles dancing across the surface as if gravity itself were trying to twist sideways.

Kylo could feel Obi-Wan straining to keep upright, not because the Jedi was weak, but because of the fury pressing from both sides, Anakin’s wild, untempered rage and Kylo’s own dark surge, made the air between them burn like a live current. Obi-Wan had to push against both tides at once, and the effort showed in every locked muscle.

Anakin strained against the invisible bonds, every muscle in his arms and shoulders standing out in sharp relief. His breath came ragged and shallow, teeth gritted, sweat glistening along his hairline. The Force whipped around him in jagged bursts, hot and bright, the raw power of it scorching to Kylo’s senses.

“You’re lying,” Anakin snarled, but there was a crack in the words now, not weakness, but fear.

Kylo didn’t fight Obi-Wan’s hold. He made his breathing deliberate and deep, letting the pain settle into something cold and distant. His eyes locked on Anakin with unblinking intensity, holding him there even as the Force held their bodies apart. 

“You already know it’s true,” Kylo said, his voice low and unwavering.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why wait until now?” Anakin’s voice trembled despite himself.

“You weren’t ready to hear it.” Kylo said cold enough to frost the air between them, “Even now, you can’t let yourself see it. That’s how he works. He makes you think he’s the only one who understands you. He gives you just enough power, just enough praise, to keep you coming back, and every time you do, you give him another piece of yourself.”

Kylo felt Obi-Wan’s focus tighten, the bonds pressing harder for an instant as though the Jedi feared words might cut deeper than the Force. Obi-Wan’s jaw was set, lips pressed into a thin line, but Kylo could sense the unease rippling beneath his calm exterior. The Jedi Knight didn’t want to hear this any more than Anakin did.

Hux spoke, drawing all their attention to him. “The signs were there. Do you think I didn’t look into Palpatine when I was climbing the ranks? The man’s a shadow. No missteps, no weaknesses, no history that isn’t curated within an inch of its life. That kind of perfection only exists when someone’s hiding something.”

Kylo tilted his head slightly, the faintest curl of contempt tugging at his mouth. “He hides in plain sight because he makes you believe he’s just a friendly old man. He uses the Senate. He uses titles. And he uses you ,” he said, looking straight at Obi-Wan now, his voice like iron scraping over stone. “Every time you put your faith in him, every time you sent Anakin to him, you did exactly what he wanted.”

Kylo finally pushed back against the hold with everything he had, dragging the darkness into his limbs like liquid fire. His breath came harsh and hot, teeth bared as the metal hull groaned under the strain of his body fighting to tear free. Pain flared in his back, white-hot, punishing, but he embraced it, fed it into the rising tide inside him. The Force coiled and surged, thickening around him like storm clouds about to burst.

Obi-Wan’s focus shifted entirely to Kylo in that instant, the invisible grip tightening to keep him pinned. Anakin crashed to the ground with a gasp of surprise, Obi-Wan no longer restraining him. For the briefest moment, Kylo caught it, the flicker of surprise in the Jedi’s calm mask. Obi-Wan hadn’t expected this much raw power from him and that subtle shock only made Kylo push harder.

Kylo felt the pressure around him buckle, felt Obi-Wan’s concentration slip for half a heartbeat as the wave of darkness slammed against him. He could see it in the Jedi’s eyes, a quick, calculating flicker as his hand twitched toward the hilt of his lightsaber. Kylo’s lips curled into something between a smile and a snarl.

The punch came without warning, a flash of movement at the edge of Kylo’s vision, fast, desperate, uncalculated, his body reacted before his mind did. His hand shot up, colliding with pale knuckles in a sharp crack that echoed faintly off the cruiser’s hull. The sound was solid, bone against bone, but the force behind it wasn’t enough to shake him.

Kylo’s grip closed around Hux’s wrist, the tendons shifted and strained under his fingers as Hux tried to wrench free, but it was useless. Kylo could feel every small twitch of resistance, the frantic pulse beating just beneath Hux’s skin, the way his bones ground faintly against each other as Kylo squeezed. A small, vicious part of him considered breaking it, just to make a point. Just to hear the snap.

He registered the look in Hux’s eyes, far closer now than it had any right to be. No mask of smugness, no brittle arrogance to hide behind, just raw concern, held together by sheer will. Not for himself, Kylo realized with a jolt, but for the situation, for the chaos spiraling out of control around them, and for Kylo. It wasn’t fear of the blow Kylo might deliver. It was fear of what might come after.

The realization was so alien, so absurd, that Kylo almost stepped back in surprise. Almost.

The darkness urged him forward, telling him to finish it. His other arm came up, fist tightening, a strike coiled and ready. The air between them was hot with breath and tension, and Kylo’s knuckles stopped centimeters from Hux’s face, so close he could see individual strands of crimson hair shifting in the wind, brushing faintly against his hand. Hux didn’t flinch. His jaw set, his lips drawn tight, though Kylo caught the flicker of something raw behind the mask.

“Ren.” The voice was strained, almost quiet, not barked like an order. It was a warning. Or maybe a plea.

The pressure around them thickened, Obi-Wan’s presence pressing down on his shoulders, Anakin’s fury still pulsing like a second heartbeat in the Force. The landing pad itself seemed to hum with barely-contained energy, a storm waiting to break.

Still Kylo held the wrist locked tight, savoring the way Hux’s pulse hammered faster beneath his fingers.

Chapter 9

Kylo let his breath synchronize with the faint, steady pulse at Hux’s wrist, feeling the darkness peel away from him like smoke dissolving into cold air. He guided it back into the current of the Force, letting it drain from his limbs and spine. His own heartbeat slowed, each thrum beating in measured time with his breathing. The warmth of living flesh anchored him, a fragile point of reality amid the roiling pressure of the dark side. His heartbeat, a thunder a moment ago, ebbed into something calm and measured. Inhale. Exhale. The storm in his chest guttered like a candle in still air. He needed clarity. He needed stillness.

“How exciting.”

The voice was smooth, cutting clean through the strained silence. All four men turned instinctively, eyes sweeping the surroundings, until Kylo recognized it. He released Hux’s wrist as though it had burned him, fingers diving into his robes. From his pocket he drew the obsidian holocron, its facets glimmering with veins of cold green light. The object pulsed like a living heart in his palm as the holographic figure of Orshool shimmered into being.

The projection wore a heavy veil of shadowed silk that spilled over immaculate robes. Beneath it, his features were almost completely hidden, yet Kylo could make out the faint outline of a mouth curved in a sly, knowing smile. His voice, incongruously youthful for a figure of such authority, held a smooth confidence. The timbre was unmistakably male, clear and steady, almost casual, as though he were a friend interrupting idle conversation rather than an ancient force intruding on a standoff.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” Orshool murmured, his voice smooth as oiled glass. “I’d rather enjoy watching this unfold. It’s not every cycle you witness Jedi Master Kenobi—” his tone lingered knowingly on the title, “—and the Master of the Knights of Ren fight.”

Kylo’s jaw tightened until the muscles stood out in sharp relief, a faint tremor running along his cheek. His fingers flexed once at his side, an unconscious motion betraying the effort it took not to reach for a saber that was no longer there. Obi-Wan’s eyes narrowed, the line of his brow drawing down as he studied the hologram.

Orshool, meanwhile, stood utterly at ease, his shrouded form unruffled, the veil cascading down to the very floor beneath his projected feet, swaying faintly as though stirred by a breeze no one else could feel. The youth in his voice contrasted jarringly with the depth of his words, carrying the sort of unhurried poise that comes from someone who has never feared interruption. He pressed on, unbothered, his tone almost playful, as though the threat hanging between Kylo and Obi-Wan amused him rather than concerned him.

“My credits are on the old man. Then again…” His veiled head tilted slightly. “He isn’t quite a Jedi Master just yet, and you haven’t yet taken up the mantle of the Master, Kylo. So it could still be anyone’s game.”

The words, absurd as they sounded, cut through the tension like a blade through silk. The oppressive weight in the air seemed to dissolve, as if the holocron itself were siphoning away the fight. Kylo didn’t doubt Orshool could do exactly that, the relic had performed stranger feats. After all, it was through Orshool that he had been able to bring Shmi Skywalker back from the grip of death.

“Who is this?” Obi-Wan asked sharply, stepping closer to study the phantom.

“You may address me as Orshool,” the hologram intoned with mocking courtesy.

Anakin drifted nearer despite himself, awe flickering across his face and momentarily smothering his anger. He kept his distance from both Obi-Wan and Kylo, aligning instinctively beside Hux, the least partisan figure in this volatile gathering.

“Shall we?” Orshool gestured to the cruiser, and then idly pointing to the wrecked landing pad beneath their feet, cracked duracrete, supplies scattered to the edge of the platform. “Unless, of course, one of you intends to pay for repairs.”

From beyond the landing pad came the echo of approaching voices, first a murmur, then sharper calls, the kind made by people who sensed trouble but hadn’t yet decided whether to run from it or toward it. The group moved quickly, sweeping up fallen supplies, climbing the boarding ramp of the waiting cruiser with wordless efficiency.

The cruiser’s ramp hissed closed behind them with a hydraulic shudder. The outside world, the acrid air, the alarmed voices, the thrum of the city below, fell away, replaced by the sterile hush of the ship’s interior. Footsteps echoed off narrow passageways as they moved through, the metallic tang of coolant and ionized air filling their lungs.

Kylo broke away first. He didn’t speak, didn’t look back. His robes whispered along the deck plates as he cut through the corridor, each stride longer and faster than the last. He needed space. He needed to still his thoughts before they drowned him.

The holocron pulsed faintly in Kylo’s palm, emerald veins of light bleeding across its obsidian surface. Above it, the veiled figure floated soundlessly, as they made their way to the cockpit. 

“You walk like a man being hunted,” Orshool observed, almost teasing, as if they were strolling a garden rather than a ship. “Still trying to avoid Hux?”

Kylo didn’t answer. He reached the cockpit and slid the door shut behind him with a sharp hiss, cutting off the sound of the others settling. The ship was quiet here, save for the soft hum of systems coming online and the faint vibration of the repulsorlifts warming beneath the hull.

He dropped into the pilot’s seat, robes pooling like spilled ink around his boots, the faint hum of the holocron still pulsing as it floated around the cockpit. The cockpit was awash with the pale glow of readouts and the quiet, steady thrum of the repulsorlifts warming under the hull. His eyes fixed on the control panels, dark and unblinking, as his fingers began to dance over the toggles and levers with practiced precision.

The cruiser shuddered, engines roaring to life with a deep metallic growl. Warning lights flared amber on the bulkheads behind him, someone wasn’t strapped in, maybe none of them were. Kylo didn’t care. He had no patience for safety checks or calm departures.

The ship lifted hard from the fractured landing pad, inertial dampeners groaning as they strained to keep pace with the sudden acceleration. With a sharp pull on the yoke, Kylo sent the craft knifing through the low cloud cover, the planet’s mottled surface falling away beneath them. The dull ocher haze of the backwater atmosphere thinned, then vanished altogether, replaced by the endless black sea of space pricked with cold, brilliant stars. A single burst from the thrusters carried them beyond the last wisps of gravity drag. 

Only then did Kylo let out the breath he’d been holding, his shoulders tight, jaw clenched, the holocron still glimmering beside him like an uninvited guest. Kylo didn’t look at it. He didn’t have to. He could feel Orshool’s presence radiating from it, patient and watchful, like a predator perched in the dark just out of sight.

“I was hoping we’d have a moment alone.” Orshool spoke, voice low and oddly pleased. 

—

Anakin cursed in guttural Huttese, bracing himself against the galley counter as mugs and utensils clattered like wind-tossed dice, rolling with the violent lurch of take-off. Kylo had given no warning—just yanked the cruiser into the sky with all the subtlety of a rancor in a crystal shop. Supplies they’d barely salvaged from the landing pad were now careening madly about the compartment. A plate ricocheted past his head, and Anakin let out another string of inventive profanity..

Shoving himself upright, he strode toward the cockpit, fury simmering just below the surface. It had dulled slightly since Kylo’s revelation, but it still burned deep, searing through him. Darth Sidious was Palpatine. The thought knifed through his skull, dragging memories with it—late-night conversations, Palpatine’s honeyed voice sowing doubt, chipping away at his trust in Obi-Wan, in the Council, in everything but the man himself. Kriff. It was all there, like a pattern he’d refused to see.

The moment Hux had pointed it out, it was as though the Force had snapped into alignment, cruelly clear. How had the Jedi Council missed Sidious? How had Obi-Wan missed him? How, Force help him , had he missed him? The truth didn't just wound, it humiliated. He had trusted Palpatine, more than trusted—he had confided in him. Now, the blindfold had been ripped away, and in the harsh light of knowledge, everything stank of manipulation and betrayal.

He had to find Kylo and Orshool. They had shown him a glimpse of what lay ahead—what he would become. A monster forged in darkness and fire, whose eyes were empty and whose blade was turned on everything he loved. The powers that Vader held, the connection to the darkside, it wasn’t just a threat hanging in the air. It was already happening. His manifestations had already begun, the swell of power, unshaped and volatile, quick to respond, and even quicker to destroy. He had killed his mother, not with his hands, but with his fear. It hadn’t taken Palpatine much prompting, all he needed was to plant a single seed of doubt. Anakin had done the rest, nourishing it and letting it grow into something monstrous. 

Kylo had said it plainly, back on Tatooine, if things continue the way they are, you could kill Obi-Wan in a year, maybe even less.

That had terrified him more than anything. A dark mirror held up to Anakin’s face, with no illusions to shield him. I’ve already killed my mother, I can kill my master too. And the worst part? A small, shaking part of him believed it. Not because he wanted to. Not because he ever would—but because something inside him whispered that the line between would and could was already beginning to blur.

Giving up his future had been almost easy, after that revelation, after losing his mother, after almost losing Obi-Wan, the decision had been clear to him. Anakin Skywalker could not live in a galaxy without them, not as a man standing in the light. The bond, giving up the bond with Obi-Wan had been like tearing out his heart. It was the thread that had tethered him to the edge when the darkness closed in. A presence beside his own in the Force, constant, steady, gentle when needed, unshakable when not. Obi-Wan’s thoughts had been like a second heartbeat in his chest, familiar and anchoring, but he knew it was better to give everything up than to stand alone at the end. 

The night after Ilum had been... illuminating. Obi-Wan had stayed with him, tucking him in after the tears stopped, whispering words that glowed like embers in his heart: I am yours, as you are mine. Precious words, too precious to hope for more. How could he see past the anger, past the darkness gathering around Anakin like a second skin? Whatever possibility might have lived in that moment was ash now, burned away with the bond Anakin had surrendered to Kylo.

He could still feel Obi-Wan’s presence in the Force, but its familiar warmth was muffled, as though behind a wall of duraplex, close enough to see, impossible to touch. In the past few days, reaching for that bond had been like reaching for a severed limb, instinct betrayed by loss, only to be met with the charred end. When Obi-Wan had held him, he had yearned, achingly, for that silent echo of his master’s thoughts, for the wordless reassurance that would never come again.

With an impatient motion, Anakin shoved his hair back, fingers instinctively seeking his Padawan braid, only to find the space empty yet again. Maybe, once the Jedi Council inevitably cast him out, he’d grow his hair long. Maybe long enough to hide a braid in it, like those insufferably stylish holostar idols Alaya kept pointing out.

He wasn’t the only one bound for the cockpit. The corridor curved with the subtle hum of the cruiser’s power conduits, lit in a low amber glow that seemed to sway with each minor adjustment of the ship. From the opposite passage, Hux appeared, pale as if carved from alabaster, his expression cool and unreadable, the heavy folds of a dark robe thrown over Chandrilan ones sweeping about his legs. His polished boots clicked against the deck with infuriating calm, as though the violent ascent had been a casual afternoon stroll.

Obi-Wan followed beside him, his pace measured but unrelenting, every line of his figure taut with quiet purpose. His Jedi robes shifted around his lean frame, shoulders straight, spine unyielding, every motion refined by years of discipline and restraint. Anakin could still remember that frame encompassing him, how warm his master had felt when he held him, and the steady thrum of his master's heart beat as Anakin cried over it. 

Obi-Wan’s face, lit faintly by the pale glow of the ship’s lighting, still held a youthfulness that had been yet to be carved away by time. Even with a beard, slightly longer than Anakin ever remembered it being, there was a lingering of gentleness to his features. His hair, swept neatly back in the way he always wore it, caught the light in glints of copper and gold. But Anakin saw the subtle disruption, the slightly tousled strands near the temple, the uneven part at the crown, and knew, just knew , that Obi-Wan had recently run a hand through it in quiet frustration or thought. A tell that only Anakin would notice. Only he would care to.

The soft fall of his boots was almost silent, but Anakin could feel him in the Force like a steady flame, controlled but burning. The sight of him, so composed, so near and yet unreachable, twisted something in Anakin’s chest, something old and tender and achingly present. A hollow note of longing that rang through the spaces between heartbeats. It wasn’t just memory that stirred in him, but yearning —for the bond they had lost, for the closeness that once anchored him, for the quiet safety of being known.

They reached the cockpit door at nearly the same moment, three paths converging under the low thrum of the hyperdrive. Without breaking stride, Anakin stabbed the control panel with more force than necessary. The durasteel door shuddered and slid open with a sharp hiss, the sound cutting through the cabin like an accusation. He didn’t bother to announce himself. Let the hiss do it for him.

“Why is Hux here, Orshool?” Kylo demanded, not even looking up at first, his attention fixed on the holocron hovering at his side. Only when the three entered did he glance over, annoyance flashing across his face.

The cockpit itself was built for command, sleek consoles, polished gilded metal panels, and panoramic transparisteel that gave a full view of the star-streaked void beyond. The control surfaces glowed with muted blues and silvers, tracing Kylo’s restless movements like the pulse of a living thing. Yet with four men now packed inside, the space felt far less like a bridge of command and more like the eye of a storm, pressurized, and humming with too many unspoken thoughts.

Anakin stalked forward, his boots striking the deck in sharp rhythm, his anger radiating outward like heat from an overcharged engine. Even the air felt different, tinged with the faint ozone tang of strained circuitry and the oil-and-metal scent that clung to all starships after a rough ascent. Sliding into the co-pilot’s chair with a glare sharp enough to cut transparisteel, he shot across the console at Kylo. “Your flying is garbage.”

Obi-Wan came to stand at his shoulder, his presence in the Force steady as bedrock, though a wry glint tugged at the corners of his mouth. Hux lingered at the door, refusing to be drawn in, his posture deceptively lazy as he leaned back against the frame. But even his calculated detachment couldn’t hide the glint in his eyes, a soldier assessing the room, taking measure of every weakness.

All of them turned toward the holocron. Orshool’s image rotated lazily in midair, its emerald glow painting their faces in eerie, shifting light. Reflections crawled along the polished panels of the cockpit, throwing long, skeletal shadows that seemed to pulse with every word. The hum of the ship’s engines undercut it all, low and steady, like the sound of something vast waiting to speak.

“Do continue,” Hux said, his voice as dry as sun-baked stone. “I’d also like to know how I ended up here.”

“I’m not entirely certain,” Orshool admitted, pacing in miniature across the holocron’s projection field. “I sensed your presence at the palace, but you shouldn’t have been able to pass through. The ritual was meant for Kylo alone. You haven’t paid the price—yet somehow you carry the gift.”

Hux spread his hands with mock innocence, expression as sharp as cut glass. “Maybe I’m just special,” he drawled, every syllable soaked in practiced boredom.

“You’re from the future too?” Anakin questioned, his voice edged with disbelief as his gaze cut from Hux to Kylo and back again. Kylo had proved his origins beyond doubt, but he hadn’t known that Hux had come from the future too. 

Hux met his stare for half a second before glancing past him deliberately, dismissing the question as though it were beneath answering. His hand adjusted the robe he’d claimed, one of Ren’s, judging by the cut. In the holocron’s light his complexion took on a corpse-like pallor, every sharp angle of his face exaggerated by the shifting green glow.

“I never understood, Ren,” Hux said with surgical precision, “how you could idolize Skywalker, when he was clearly this stupid.”

“Hey—” Anakin half-rose from his seat, fury surging like a tide, but Obi-Wan’s steady hand pressed firmly against his shoulder, holding him in place.

Kylo flushed crimson, jaw tightening, eyes darting toward Hux as if the words had exposed something raw. “He’s still young,” he said stiffly. “Besides, I idolized Vader.”

The name detonated in Anakin like a thermal charge. He went rigid, and Obi-Wan’s grip tightened fractionally.

“It’s all right, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said softly. His voice was calm as a still lake, but beneath it Anakin felt the ripple of pain in the Force, the depth of his master’s understanding and his unwavering resolve. The quiet assurance steadied him even as it hollowed his chest. Obi-Wan’s hand stayed firm on Anakin’s shoulder, an anchor in the storm.

Anakin swallowed hard, but it felt as if he were choking down fire. His throat constricted, words tangled in his chest, desperate to escape, but they only scraped against the back of his teeth. The cockpit lights seemed harsher, the holocron’s green glow stabbing into his eyes like judgment itself. Even the Force around him felt distorted, as if echoing his turmoil, rippling in short, sharp bursts. He could only shake his head, struggling to reconcile the calm in his master’s voice with the horror he felt rising inside.

Hux, of course, couldn’t leave the silence unbroken. “A Jedi Knight willing to look away from the darkness staring him in the face, no wonder you missed Sideous, Kenobi.”

“How dare you,” Anakin ground out, his fingers tightening on the console edge until the metal creaked in protest.

“Enough, Hux,” Kylo said sharply, cutting through the rising tension. His voice held no humor, only that cold, unreadable intensity that made it difficult to tell whether he was angry or merely taking mental notes.

“As entertaining as this is,” Orshool interrupted dryly, “there are more pressing concerns, Kylo.” The hologram fizzled once, twice, before abruptly vanishing. A beat later, it flickered back on, casting the cockpit in that eerie green light again. 

“Something—” Orshool said, his voice slightly distorted now, “draining the holo—”

The image stuttered violently, splintering into shards of light. “Kylo, you need to—”

A dull thud cut Orshool off midsentence as the projection collapsed in on itself, spitting fragments of emerald light before vanishing altogether. The holocron rolled once on the deck plates with an almost mocking clatter before settling, its polished obsidian faces gleaming faintly under the console lights, cold, flawless, and utterly dead.

Kylo’s hand jerked and the Force responded like a hound to its master. The artifact shot into his palm with a weightless hiss of displaced air. His eyes narrowed, and the temperature of the cockpit seemed to dip as he drew hard on the dark side. Power gathered around him in palpable waves, making the metal bulkheads hum in resonance. 

Anakin felt it shiver through the deck plates beneath his boots, a low vibration that set his teeth on edge. The darkness gathering in Kylo was raw, unstable, the kind of fury that didn’t burn clean but smoked and choked, seeping into every corner.

Kylo probed the crystal matrix, peeling at its secrets with invisible claws, but the holocron gave nothing. No echo of Orshool’s sardonic voice. No lingering presence. It was like trying to reach into the Force and finding only a void. The silence it left behind was heavy and unnatural, pressing against their chests, dampening every breath. 

Kylo’s frustration spiked, flaring red-hot through the Force like a plasma torch on overload. Anakin felt it before he heard it, the deck under his boots gave a faint shudder, as though the cruiser itself recoiled from the sudden surge of power. Panels along the bulkhead gave a soft metallic groan.

Kylo’s fingers clenched around the holocron until the polished facets caught the cockpit lights like shards of ice. For a heartbeat Anakin half expected the thing to crack in his grip. The darkness coiled and then snapped back, and Kylo let out a furious curse, short, guttural, almost wordless. Not just anger. Frustration. Defeat.

The holocron remained cold and inert, as if mocking them all. Orshool was gone, wiped clean, like sand swept away by the Tatooine wind. Anakin’s stomach twisted, a hollow drop that left him feeling lightheaded. Whatever answers Orshool had held, whatever threads might have led Anakin to clarity, whatever knowledge that he may have held, had been cut clean and cast into the void.

Kylo’s shoulders rose and fell once, sharp and ragged, the movement of someone trying, and failing, to contain fury. The air still hummed faintly from the residue of his anger, metallic and dry in Anakin’s throat. With a disgusted flick of his wrist, Kylo shoved the holocron aside; it slid across the console, the soft scrape of obsidian on durasteel louder than it had any right to be.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kylo finally said, voice clipped and hard, each word like the snap of a restraining bolt. His fingers moved over the navicomputer with sharp, practiced precision. “I can still do this.”

“You mean we can still do this,” Hux drawled, his lean frame leaning lazily against the threshold. Arms crossed, posture insolent, the picture of patient, polished arrogance.

Kylo didn’t so much as twitch. He might as well have been deaf. His broad shoulders stayed rigid, head slightly bowed as he bent over the glowing console, as though Hux’s existence were beneath acknowledgment, as though the other man were just another shadow in the room. The slight narrowing of Hux’s eyes was immediate, his lips pressing into a line so tight they seemed to drain of color, leaving only a pale, angry slash across his face. But he said nothing. 

With a final, decisive tap, Kylo entered the last string of coordinates. The navicomputer chirped its confirmation, and the cockpit lights dimmed momentarily as the ship locked into hyperspace alignment. Above the control array, the star map unfolded in clean, cold lines of silver and blue, an intricate lattice of celestial data hovering in midair, throwing faint light over their faces like ghostfire.

“Astrophel?” Anakin asked, glancing up from his seat, voice low.

“There’s a tomb there,” Kylo replied. “It once housed Orshool’s holocron.”

Obi-Wan stepped forward, moving closer to the projection, eyes scanning the starmap with quiet intensity. The lines of his face were sharpened by the shifting light, the blue glow turning his eyes to cold, crystalline focus.

“You won’t be able to enter Astrophel,” he said quietly, almost to himself.

“Why not?” Kylo still didn’t look up, his focus locked on the console, fingers tracing new adjustments to the course.

“Because it’s private property.” Obi-Wan’s hand moved through the projection, touching the glowing coordinates. The sphere glowed red as it was enlarged, standing in stark contrast to the surrounding planets. “And heavily restricted. Someone went to great lengths to keep people out.”

Anakin turned to the auxiliary console at his side, fingers flying as he accessed the holonet. A planet this deep in the Core couldn’t simply be unclaimed. Someone had to own it. A mining guild, perhaps, maybe a trade conglomerate. He leaned closer as the data scrolled past his screen, green letters bleeding into black space.

[Holonet News Brief – Core Worlds Edition]

Tragedy in the Naberrie Family: Young Heir Eilif Naberrie Passes at Age 7

Coruscant, Core Worlds, 22 BBY - The Naberrie family has released a formal statement confirming the death of Eilif Naberrie, only child of renowned philanthropist and current Acting Senator of Naboo, Solaire Naberrie:

It is with deep sorrow that the Naberrie family announces the passing of Eilif Naberrie, cherished son of Solaire Naberrie, who departed this life at the tender age of seven, after a prolonged struggle with congenital health complications. Eilif passed peacefully at the family’s private residence on Astrophel.

Though Eilif’s life was brief and marked by medical fragility, those closest to him knew a child of rare spirit, gentle, curious, and filled with quiet wonder. Due to the delicate nature of his condition, Eilif lived largely away from public view, and his existence remained a private matter for the family. Yet within the halls of the Rêverie Estate, he was a bright and beloved presence, whose laugh, though seldom loud, was music to those who knew him.

Eilif possessed a natural affinity for music, which became both his comfort and his language. He spent countless hours at the old family holopiano, where he would listen, learn, and play by ear with uncanny sensitivity. He was particularly fond of lullabies from Naboo's lake country and Corellian ballads, which his uncle, Adrien Naberrie, often played for him on visits. The two shared a bond of extraordinary closeness; Adrien was not only a loving uncle, but also a confidant, companion, and, by all accounts, Eilif’s dearest friend.

In accordance with family wishes, a private memorial will be held at the Rêverie Estate on Astrophel, where Eilif will be laid to rest beneath the flowering magnolia trees he so loved to watch from his window.

The family asks that their privacy be respected during this time of mourning. In lieu of flowers or offerings, the Naberrie Foundation for Pediatric Healing will accept donations in Eilif’s name to support advanced medical care and musical therapy for children facing chronic illness throughout the Core and Mid Rim.

Eilif is survived by his father, Solaire Naberrie; his uncle Adrien Naberrie; his uncle Ruwee Naberrie (Jobal Naberrie) and extended family including Senator Padmé Amidala of Naboo and Sola Naberrie, whose devotion to him remained steadfast even across distance.

He was loved. He is missed. He will be remembered—as a quiet light that shone too briefly, and as a melody that lingers long after its final note.

Chapter 10

They adjusted the course, not toward Astrophel, as originally planned, but back to Naboo.

Astrophel lay buried deep in the turbulent currents of the Deep Core, where navigation itself was a feat of precision and nerve. The planet was sealed tight beneath the watchful eye of the Naberrie Foundation, an institution run by Solaire and Adrien Naberrie, twin younger brothers of Ruwee Naberrie, Padmé’s father. Though the recent death notice of Eilif Naberrie had been posted to the Holonet, it had all but disappeared beneath the tidal wave of news cycles dominated by the brewing galactic war.

Solaire Naberrie, renowned across the Core Worlds as a philanthropist and measured diplomat, was currently serving as acting Senator of Naboo. Padmé, at Anakin’s request, had chosen not to return to Coruscant after the disaster on Geonosis. Instead, she remained secluded on her homeworld, a decision that allowed Solaire to assume her duties on the Senate floor. When Anakin had learned that Astrophel’s planetary protocols were too airtight to force entry, he reached out to her with urgency.

She had submitted an official request to the Foundation, but warned them that Solaire was currently sequestered deep within the Senate’s security wing. When, or if, he would respond was uncertain.

With no other viable alternative, they turned toward Naboo, a neutral refuge. The Jedi Temple was out of the question. Kylo, as dark and unstable as a collapsing star, couldn’t so much as pass through its outer halls without drawing a swarm of Temple Guards. A confrontation like that was a luxury none of them could afford.

Obi-Wan had been ignoring the Temple's repeated calls, though not without consequence. Despite his silence, the messages still came. The latest had arrived only hours ago, a courteous but unmistakably pointed request from Master Depa Billaba, urging him to return “at his earliest convenience.” Behind every diplomatic word, the pressure of the Council’s expectations pressed like a durasteel weight against his ribs. It wasn’t willful defiance, not exactly. It was prioritization. A quiet triage of impossible choices.

Obi-Wan had a greater concern now. A revelation so shattering it had left his once-unshakable foundation splintered: Chancellor Palpatine was Darth Sidious, and for years he had allowed that monster access to Anakin. He had sent his padawan to the very doorstep of corruption and stood by as the man wove his influence around Anakin’s psyche like a silken, invisible noose.

The guilt was a raw and unrelenting tide, gnawing at his composure, whispering failures with every breath. How had he not seen it?

Kylo’s own admission had all but confirmed the worst. He, too, had been groomed, another legacy of broken mentorship, another echo of the same haunting pattern. It felt like a curse etched into their bloodlines.

Running a trembling hand through his hair, Obi-Wan tried to quiet the tremor in his fingers, but it only reminded him of yet another failure, the fracture in his connection to the Force. Ever since the severing of his bond with Anakin, his once-fluid access to it had become unstable, erratic. He had hoped time would restore it, that it would re-anchor on its own, but he had been wrong.

Back on the landing pad, when he had stretched the Force between Kylo and Anakin, two blazing infernos on the brink of collision, it had nearly broken him. He had needed to draw so deeply, so fiercely, that it left him gasping. When Kylo began fighting back in earnest, Obi-Wan had nearly ignited his saber by reflex, not reason. It had taken everything in him to release Anakin just to restrain Kylo.

Kylo, for all his volatility, was unmistakably Anakin’s legacy, his power immense, his rage volcanic. Though not quite as strong, his strength was formidable, and Obi-Wan had been running on fumes.

If Hux hadn’t intervened when he did… Obi-Wan didn’t know how the confrontation would have ended. What he did know was this: both Anakin and Kylo had pushed him to his physical limit. Now, as he walked the corridor of the cruiser en route to the cockpit, the ache of that exertion thrummed through his bones. His connection to the Force felt like trying to grip vapor. Still, there was no time for that. No time for the creeping dread of disconnection. He had to stay focused. He had to choose what mattered most in the moment.

He pressed his fingers to the cockpit door sensor, and it hissed open.

Inside the cockpit, Anakin sat at the helm, the datapad cradled in one hand, the other tapping rhythmically at the nav controls. His eyes flicked occasionally to the instrument readouts, monitoring their trajectory back to Naboo. He looked calm but Obi-Wan knew him too well to miss the flicker of residual tension in his posture.

Kylo had been ejected from the pilot’s seat earlier, after a particularly chaotic flight adjustment. Anakin had snapped at him, “Whoever taught you to fly should be shot” only to receive a wounded silence in return. Hux, ever precise and cruel, had delivered the gutting truth: “His father taught him.” The silence that followed had been louder than any outburst. Anakin had offered a sheepish glance of regret, but Kylo had already vanished down the corridor.

“How did the council meeting go?” Anakin asked quietly as Obi-Wan eased into the copilot’s seat beside him.

“I didn’t answer,” Obi-Wan murmured, fighting the instinct to rake a hand through his hair again. “I marked the channel as busy.”

Anakin’s brow rose, the smallest crease of surprise shifting his expression. Obi-Wan could see the questions forming behind his eyes. In all their years together, Obi-Wan had never openly defied the Council. He had challenged them, yes. Disagreed, but he had always obeyed, always trusted.

“You’re not going back to the Temple?” Anakin asked, cautious, fingers idly tracing the datapad’s edge.

Obi-Wan smiled, but it wasn’t the wry, practiced smile he often wore to mask discomfort. This one was quiet, private, touched with a sadness that sank deeper than words. The last few weeks had stripped him bare, almost dying, losing the bond, almost losing Anakin—revelation after revelation—and somewhere in all of it, something fundamental had shifted. The Council, the Code, even the oath he’d sworn as a youngling… none of it weighed more than the young man sitting before him. 

He knew that made him a poor Jedi, perhaps even a disgrace to everything he’d been taught. But Hux had been right, in that cutting way of his: Obi-Wan was not a very good Jedi. Yet Anakin did not need a perfect Jedi. He needed Obi-Wan, and in some raw, unspoken corner of his heart, Obi-Wan needed him even more.

“I will not let you walk this path alone,” he said at last. The words left his mouth with quiet finality, heavy and unbreakable. 

Anakin looked up, meeting his gaze. In his eyes was a tempest of disbelief and longing, as though the words were finally real. Not platitudes, not strategy but truth. Obi-Wan reached out, palms open in silent plea. Anakin didn’t hesitate. He set the datapad aside and took his hand, fingers curling into his with an unspoken reverence.

“I made you a promise, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, trying to convey the strength of his conviction behind each word. “I am yours.”

Anakin’s hand stilled completely in Obi-Wan’s, and in the silence that followed, loyalty eclipsed duty, and friendship blurred into something far stronger than any Jedi Code had room to define. Obi-Wan had chosen his path, and he would not regret it, not when he still had the power in him to help Anakin. The Force would do what it must, but he would stand with Anakin until the very end. 

Even if Anakin walked away after all of this, even if he carved out a life without him on some distant planet, Obi-Wan knew he would still love him. Every moment they’d shared, every mission, every quiet exchange of trust, he would hold them all as treasures, locked deep in a heart that was never meant to be burdened by love, but was too full to be anything else.

“Kylo intends to kill Sidious,” Anakin said suddenly. His tone was flat, unyielding, as if he’d been rehearsing the words long before speaking them. “And I intend to help.”

Obi-Wan gave a small nod, he’d suspected as much. He trusted Anakin’s innate sense of justice, the fire that drove him to act where others hesitated. Yet deep inside, Obi-Wan dreaded where that fire might lead if fanned too hard. He could already hear the next words forming in Anakin’s mind, as inevitable as the slow march of time.

“A Jedi can’t be caught killing the Chancellor,” Anakin finished quietly.

There it was—the line in the sand. Not a shout, not an act of defiance, but a quiet truth so solid that no argument could move it. Obi-Wan felt it like a weight in his chest, pressing inward, as if the air itself had thickened. Anakin would not return to the Order. Not now. Perhaps not ever.

“Then I’ll be right beside you,” he said softly, with a calm that belied the storm gathering in his chest. “Wherever this leads.”

“Perhaps,” Obi-Wan added, his voice steady, though his thumb lingered over Anakin’s knuckles in a silent reassurance, “the Jedi can still help us stop the Chancellor. Then there will be no war, no need to fight.” 

He hesitated for a moment, the vulnerability in his tone betraying the hope that clung stubbornly to his words. “If, after all of this ends… and you still want to leave… I will walk any path with you. For however long you’ll have me.”

Anakin didn’t answer right away. He turned his face from Obi-Wan, the sharp planes of his profile catching the glow from the console’s ambient light. But he wasn’t hiding. He was feeling so deeply, so intensely, that it seemed too dangerous to speak. His gaze dropped to their joined hands, as if grounding himself there in the quiet constancy of Obi-Wan’s touch.

When he finally spoke, the words came out raw, as if pried loose from a place locked deep inside him.

“I will always want you, Master.”

The confession spilled out unbidden, unguarded. A muscle flickered along his jaw, and he returned his gaze back to Obi-Wan with unrelenting intensity, blue eyes luminous and too bright, too open. It was a look stripped of defenses, laid bare with fierce vulnerability, as if daring Obi-Wan to see it, to feel it, to understand . There was no hesitation, no ambiguity in that stare, only the quiet, undeniable truth of it: Anakin Skywalker wanted him, not because of loyalty or legacy, but because he chose to, because he always would.

The words struck with the force of a lightsaber to the chest with agonizing precision. I will always want you. There was no evasion in Anakin’s voice, no shield raised between them now. It was not just a confession, it was a surrender. Obi-Wan felt something inside himself tilt, dangerously, under the weight of it.

In that moment, Obi-Wan was no longer the Jedi Knight, not the Council’s perfect son. He was simply Obi-Wan —and Obi-Wan was unraveling.

His heart gave a single, sharp beat, then another, each one echoing louder than the last in the hollow space behind his ribs. He could feel the silence around them change, thick with things unsaid, with lifetimes of restraint fraying at the edges. He had trained himself to let go of attachment, to find peace in detachment. He had believed that love must be quiet, must be distant, and must never ask for anything in return. But there, in the steel-blue blaze of Anakin’s gaze, was something he had never allowed himself to hope for.

Not just affection. Not just loyalty. Want.

A breath shuddered through him before he could stop it, sharp and silent. He did not look away, what had once been forbidden now felt inevitable . Something in the Force shifted, subtle at first, like the whisper of distant thunder, then swelling into a current Obi-Wan could feel vibrating against his very bones. The broken bond between them, dormant and cold as dead ash, began to stir. Heat bloomed within it, slow and deliberate, as if unseen hands had thrust the fragments into a forge.

Obi-Wan moved before he knew what he was doing, he pushed himself forward, kneeling beneath Anakin as he sat on the pilot’s seat. He brought his other hand to cup at Anakin’s cheek, feeling the heat of his face in his hand. 

“Anakin.” Obi-Wan’s voice cracked, trembling with desperate tenderness, his breath catching around the name like a prayer. “Tell me you want this… the same way I do.”

Anakin’s breath hitched, barely audible, but Obi-Wan felt it like a tremor in the Force. The space between them collapsed not with suddenness, but with inevitability, as if they had always been moving toward this convergence. A slow, deliberate fusion of two souls who had spent too long orbiting each other without ever daring to collide. In that breathless sliver of silence, there was no impending war. No Council. No Jedi Code. There was only this : the unbearable closeness, the quiet ache, the fierce, fragile truth blooming between them like something holy reborn.

“We can’t…” Anakin’s voice was hoarse, rough as sand scraped over stone. He looked at Obi-Wan like he was seeing the edge of a dream he’d never let himself believe. “There’s too much darkness in me now. I can’t… I won’t take your future too.”

The plea struck Obi-Wan harder than a blow. My future? The Order? The Code? Did Anakin really think that losing a place with the Jedi would wound him more than losing this—losing Anakin ?

Something ancient and inescapable moved through Obi-Wan, older than duty, older than the Code itself. It carried him forward in a single, fluid motion, arms reaching out not in hesitation but with the surety of a man who had finally stopped running from his own heart. He caught Anakin in a full-bodied embrace, pulling them up from the seat, one hand splaying across the younger man’s back, the other wrapping firmly around his shoulders, as if he could hold all the fractures in Anakin’s soul together through sheer will.

Anakin's hand rose instinctively, fisting in the coarse weave of Obi-Wan’s tunic, as though to wedge something tangible between them, some flimsy barrier against the heat that threatened to consume them both. The air around them felt charged, as if the room itself held its breath.

Obi-Wan’s hand slid upward, threading gently into Anakin’s hair, fingers trembling. He tilted his head and pressed his lips to Anakin’s forehead. The kiss was soft, reverent, a quiet benediction for a soul Obi-Wan had never stopped believing in. His lips lingered there, the faintest tremor passing through them as his breath warmed the skin beneath.

It was a gesture far too gentle for the storm burning behind it but somehow, the only one that fit. A moment suspended outside time, fragile and immense.

“My future,” Obi-Wan whispered, the words thick with emotion, each syllable shaped by conviction stronger than steel, “will always be with you, Anakin.”

His voice barely carried, but the Force itself seemed to listen .

The air thrummed softly, a low, resonant vibration that hummed against Obi-Wan’s skin and threaded through his chest like a second heartbeat. This wasn’t the blinding surge of battle clarity or the calm stillness of meditation. This was something older , something elemental and indivisible. It moved around them like starlight filtered through water, refracted through memory and choice. Not destiny. Not prophecy. Just them , stripped of all else.

The Force didn’t speak in words, but it responded. It answered . Not with approval, not with condemnation, but with a kind of aching, mournful acceptance, as if it had always known that one day, this moment would come. As if the galaxy itself had been waiting for Obi-Wan to say what should have been said long ago.

It wasn’t just a vow he had spoken. It was a declaration . A soft, radiant rebellion—burning not in anger, but in love.

A quiet refusal to let duty blind him any longer. A turning away from the Council’s cold doctrines, from the cloistered rooms filled with shadows pretending to be light. A final, deliberate severing from the ghosts that had haunted his choices, Yoda’s cryptic warnings, Mace Windu’s unbending judgment, the endless teachings that had prized serenity over compassion, detachment over love.

They had all told him this could not be. That Anakin was dangerous, that attachment would destroy them both. Let them be wrong. Let the Council scorn him. Let the Code crumble. Let Coruscant’s towers fall and the stars themselves burn down to cinders. None of it mattered now. Because this, Anakin, was the one thing in the galaxy he would not abandon.

—

The Naberrie Estate on Varykino was as beautiful as Anakin remembered, serene and sun-drenched, nestled between gently rolling hills that cascaded into the silvery waters of Lake Country. Here, the galaxy felt impossibly far away. Only the tranquil hum of cicadas in the olive groves and the low splash of waves lapping at the stone landing pier. It was a sanctuary that seemed almost unreal, a dream cradled in sunlight, suspended just beyond the reach of duty and dread.

Which made the ache in Anakin’s chest all the more unbearable by the time they pierced Naboo’s atmosphere. The cruiser had shuddered slightly as it cut through the thin veil of clouds, sunlight breaking across the hull in molten sheets of gold. His hands trembled so violently on the flight yoke that every adjustment came out sharp and uneven, the thrusters whining in protest. He was faintly amazed the ship hadn’t splintered beneath his grip—or worse, plummeted nose-first in an ungraceful spiral into the silver-blue waters of Lake Country glimmering below.

Obi-Wan’s words still echoed in his mind, reverberating like a bell struck in a vacuum, impossible to silence, inescapable and absolute. They hadn’t hit him like a blow. They’d pressed on him like gravity itself, steady and unrelenting, impossible to resist. He latched onto the landing sequence as if it could save him, forcing himself to focus on readouts and stabilizers, on numbers and vectors instead of the storm inside his chest. A task. A mechanical thing he could control when everything else felt like it was unraveling.

The instant the cruiser touched down and the boarding ramp hissed open, Anakin bolted down it, boots striking the sun-warmed stone with almost reckless speed. He didn’t give Obi-Wan a chance to follow, didn’t give anyone a chance to speak. He didn’t dare. If he heard one more word in that quiet, steady voice, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t shatter entirely. And then—he saw her. Shmi. She stood framed against the soft green of Naboo’s hills, her hair caught in the light breeze, her face lined with years but luminous with the same gentle strength he remembered. She opened her arms without hesitation, and in an instant he was a boy again, running through the sand-swept streets of Mos Espa toward the only person who had ever been his home.

She embraced him as if no time had passed at all, as if he were still the small child she’d once held against her heart beneath the twin suns of Tatooine. She wept quietly into his shoulder, tears warm against his neck, but there was no anger in them, no accusation. Only love. “I understand,” she whispered. “I forgive you. I still love you.” And just like that, the galaxy, its wars, its betrayals, its impossible choices, fell away. For one impossible, aching heartbeat, Anakin Skywalker was only a son held by his mother again.

The days that followed passed in a blur. While they waited for clearance to Astrophel, Anakin reacquainted himself not just with her, but with the family she’d built in his absence—Cliegg, Owen, Beru. What began as awkward introductions softened into hesitant conversations, which slowly warmed into something resembling kinship. It wasn’t the family he had dreamed of as a boy, but it was close enough. Close enough to feel real. Close enough to keep him busy. And busyness was a gift. It spared him from lingering too long near Obi-Wan, though the man inevitably found ways to stay close. Discipline ran in Obi-Wan’s blood; his tongue bound by Jedi propriety, his expression carefully measured. But his eyes, those steady, searching eyes, betrayed everything he would not say.

Anakin knew exactly what he was doing. He was stalling, and he despised himself for it. But what choice did he have? He could not compromise Obi-Wan’s future. Could not tear apart the life his Master had built on the unshakable bedrock of Jedi principles. Obi-Wan had given the Order everything, his loyalty, his discipline, his entire self. He was the living ideal of what a Jedi should be. Anakin, despite everything burning beneath his skin, could not be the one to unravel that. He would not take that from him. Yet— My future will always be with you.

Those words had shattered something in Anakin and lit him up from within like a supernova. For a fleeting, treacherous moment, he had nearly yielded. He had wanted to say yes, wanted to fold into Obi-Wan like smoke into wind, and drift off into the heat of a passion long denied. But he couldn’t. Not with Sidious still lurking in the shadows. Not with his own darkness prowling just beneath his skin. Not with so much left undone, so many dangers yet to be faced. He could not risk Obi-Wan, not even for love. Not when Kylo still needed him to uphold his end of the bargain.

The bond between them had flickered in the cockpit, like a spark leaping from cold embers, straining toward life despite the ashes. As if it had never truly died, and for a fleeting heartbeat, it had surged toward Anakin with aching familiarity, trying to knit itself back together, thread by invisible thread. The sensation had nearly knocked the breath from Anakin’s lungs. It terrified him. Not just because he wanted it, stars , how desperately he wanted to reach for it, to seize it with trembling, unworthy hands and never let go. That unspoken connection had once been the very marrow of his soul, more instinct than thought, more truth than any doctrine the Jedi had ever taught him. But it was gone. He had made sure of that. The bond had been the price he paid, the fire he walked through, the bridge he burned behind him. He had surrendered it with blood and silence, and no amount of longing, no sharp ache of regret, could bring it back.

Yet… it was trying. Somehow, impossibly, it was trying. That was why he had pulled Kylo aside, away from the others, under the half-hearted pretense of offering a tour of the Naboo architecture he barely noticed. Kylo was sharp enough to see through it, but wise enough to follow without question. Anakin needed space. He needed answers.

They walked the shaded colonnades in the fading afternoon light, marble columns casting long golden shadows across the stone. Birds flitted through the high arches above, their songs distant and serene, so at odds with the storm churning behind Anakin’s eyes. He stopped near one of the fountains, its water glinting in the dappled sunlight like shards of glass. He turned to Kylo, jaw tight, voice low and strained.

“I need to ask you something,” Anakin said, the words barely more than a breath. “Something I don’t understand. Something that… shouldn’t be possible.”

Because the bond, what had once been sacred between himself and Obi-Wan, what he had given up, was stirring again. Something that had died… was trying to be reborn, and he needed to know why, and he didn’t know whether to fear it… or hope.

Kylo walked beside him in silence, his dark veil wound tightly around his form as if the Naboo heat were a foreign concept, something beneath his notice. While the sun cast its golden glow over the courtyard, warming every stone and ripple of water, Kylo remained untouched by it, his presence like a wound in the light. His steps made no sound across the flagstone, as if the earth itself was unwilling to acknowledge him.

“What?” he asked at last, voice flat, unreadable. His gaze drifted across the fountains but never lingered, as though the world around him was a distant echo, not quite real.

Anakin resumed walking, his boots striking harder now, the rhythm clipped and uneven. It wasn’t a stroll, it was a struggle. As though if he just kept moving, the words wouldn’t weigh so heavily when they finally came out. “On Tatooine,” he began, the word jagged in his mouth like a blade. “You told me the bond was my price. That I gave it up for my mother’s life.”

Kylo gave a slight nod, his expression didn’t change, but there was something unreadable flickering behind his eyes. Anakin’s voice sharpened, brittle with urgency. “But I felt it on the cruiser, just for a moment, it flared, like it wanted to come back. Like it was still alive.”

Kylo said nothing for a moment, merely adjusted his stride to match the quickening pace. His long robes snapped softly behind him, tugged by the breeze, but the rest of him remained composed, his posture betraying no emotion. Still, his mind was clearly moving, parsing Anakin’s words, testing their weight.

Eventually, he spoke. “It’s possible,” he said, slowly, as though constructing the thought in real time, “that your powers are trying to reforge it. The way your fear bent reality to your will… this could be the same. Your longing might be reaching out, reshaping the Force around it.”

He paused again, his voice thinning to a murmur. “The Force doesn’t differentiate between survival and desire, not perfectly.”

Anakin shot him a sidelong glance. “That sounds more like Sith doctrine than Jedi wisdom.”

Kylo didn't so much as flinch. “I’m not preaching,” he said coolly. “I’m explaining.”

He turned his gaze forward again, then added, almost as an afterthought: “Wanting can be just as dangerous as fear.”

They walked in silence for a few more paces, until Kylo spoke again, his voice lower, the tone weighted with something unspoken. “The Force doesn’t care what should be possible. It will always answer those who know how to ask.”

Anakin slowed, his stride faltering until he finally stopped beneath the wide, arching limbs of an olive tree. The gnarled branches cast soft shadows over him, their silver-green leaves rustling faintly above. He tilted his head toward the sky as if listening for something he couldn't quite name.

“So you’re saying,” he murmured, his voice almost a whisper, “if I want it—if I want him—badly enough… it might come back?”

Kylo met his gaze without blinking. “I don’t know for certain,” he said, “but with your power… it could be possible.”

A hush settled between them, drawn out and profound. The breeze moved again, weaving through the leaves, stirring the silence with the scent of old wood and distant water. Somewhere in the hills beyond the grove, bells rang—a slow, mournful chime echoing across the Naboo countryside, marking the hour.

Anakin’s hand reached up to pluck a single olive leaf from the branch above. He turned it slowly between his fingers, then began to tear it apart piece by piece, until the fragments fell from his palm like ash. “What will happen,” he asked finally, voice quiet and tentative, “if I let it be reforged?” He stared at the torn leaf in his hand, not truly seeing it, his gaze distant, as though trying to peer into the space between possibilities. His fingers stilled, and the last green fragment slipped from his palm, fluttering to the ground like a broken promise.

Kylo exhaled slowly, the breath quiet but deliberate, as if measuring its weight before speaking. “I can’t give you a complete answer,” he said at last, his voice darker now, edged with gravity. “Not without Orshool.”

“But I will remind you,” Kylo added, gaze steady, “You knew what would be taken when you made your choice.”

His robes stirred faintly in the wind, brushing the ground like smoke, and when he spoke again, there was a hard clarity in his voice.

“If the bond is reforged, I will know. That bond was part of the agreement, it can’t be hidden. And what you wished for, what you thought you were saving—” he broke off, just for a heartbeat, “—it may not be returned the way you hoped. It may return… worse.”

Anakin turned to Kylo, his eyes were filled with a raw, terrifying vulnerability. The storm that had raged within him had gone quiet, leaving behind only the wreckage of a shattered heart. “Obi-Wan said he’d walk any path with me,” Anakin whispered, the words a raw, broken confession. “He said… he was mine. What do I do with that?”

The words hung in the air between them, a fragile, desperate thing in the face of Kylo's silent judgment. Kylo watched him for a long moment, his face a perfect mask of stillness. 

"People fall in love all the time, Anakin," Kylo said with a sigh, the sound heavy with a lifetime of disappointment. "They form attachments. They walk away. They stay. They don't need a force bond to do it."

Anakin flinched, but Kylo continued, a cold, hard focus entering his gaze. "What you do with him is your own business. You can run off to live in a hut somewhere or you stay and fight by his side. That's your choice to make."

Kylo stepped closer, his voice dropping to a low, cold whisper that cut through the stillness of the air. "I don't care. It’s all the same to me, so long as you uphold the deal and the bond… it's the one thing you can't touch."

Kylo's words settled over Anakin like a cold, wet blanket. He said what Anakin did with Obi-Wan was his own business, as if the love that had bloomed between them was a passing whim. 

Anakin felt tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. He had desperately wanted to believe that maybe the force could allow him to reforge the bond, but any flicker of hope Anakin had harbored for a different answer dissolved, vanishing like mist under a rising sun. The reality settled in with a cold finality. He owed his mother too much. He had given her another chance, an impossible gift and he could not take that away. Not for anything. 

Yet, the ache in his heart would not stop, would not quiet, would not give Anakin any peace. It was a raw and relentless tide that battered against his chest, a force more powerful than any starship. He was in love with his Master, would love him until his dying breath, but what good was love when it was poisoned by fear? 

The Force, once a comforting presence, now felt like a battlefield within his own soul. Every time his thoughts drifted to Obi-Wan, to the memory of his touch, to the whispered confession of his own heart, Anakin felt the faint, terrifying stir of the broken bond. It was a ghost, cold and dormant, that threatened to ignite with the faintest whisper of his desire.

Obi-Wan had promised to stand with him until the very end and Anakin’s heart ached with the desperate, all-consuming desire to spend the rest of their lives together. But how could Anakin stand by Obi-Wan when his mere presence, his love, was a direct threat to his mother's life? 

 Kylo had said that love could exist without a bond, but Anakin knew that was a lie for him. If he stayed by Obi-Wan’s side, if he allowed himself even the smallest moment of weakness, he would feed the growing seed of want inside him. He could feel it already, that subtle pull, that unspoken need to reach out and close the distance between them. His powers, his connection to the Force, would not allow him to remain detached, not allow their love to live without a bond. The Force itself would try to reforge it anew.

Anakin knew that he wouldn’t stop it should it be reformed.

His heart was torn in two, a piece of it anchored to the quiet, sun-drenched hills of Naboo where his mother was safe, and the other desperately, impossibly, reaching out into the stars for Obi-Wan. He was trapped between two loves, and he was terrified that the wrong move, the slightest slip of his control, would cost him both.

A new resolve, cold and brittle, began to set in. He would not stop it should the bond reform, but he could prevent it from ever reaching that point. He had to. He would contain the storm inside him, bottle the chaos until it turned to dust. 

Anakin would build walls around his heart. He would bury the memory of Obi-Wan's confession, the feel of his hands on his cheek, the terrifying honesty in his eyes. He would allow his love to become a ghost, a quiet ache that he could live with, rather than a fire that would burn them all down. He would become a Jedi again in the only way that mattered, by denying the one emotion that threatened to consume him. It was a cruel and isolating path, but he saw no other choice.

Anakin would avoid being alone with his Master. He would keep their conversations to the mission, to the plans to find Sidious, to the cold, hard facts of the war. He would not meet Obi-Wan’s gaze, not allow himself to linger on his face or listen too closely to the warmth in his voice. He would become a shadow of the man he was, a walking shell, a stranger to the person who loved him most.

Anakin clenched his fists, the force of the motion making his knuckles go white. He would pay the price for his mother's life. He would give up his own happiness, his own love, for her. He would simply do what had to be done. It was the only way. It had to be the only way.