Obi-Wan Kenobi looked out over his village, and almost smiled. The green hills of Stewjon surrounded him, a flock of nerfs close at hand, and in the distance he could see the fields they all tended. Seventy years, he'd worked those fields now. He probably wouldn't be able to for much longer.
It'd been a good life, he told himself. Farming was good, honest, work, the best livelihood anybody could ask for. Every year, he watched seeds turn to sprouts and then bear fruit; the cycle of life in miniature. And then, over the course of the seasons, he'd watched the village around him enact the cycle in earnest. He'd earned the respect of those around him, become known as a wise councilor. When the Empire had come in and tried to take away their freedom, destroy everything the village had worked for, he'd been the one they'd turned to for help, even though he'd been only thirty at the time.
And he hadn't failed them. The people of Kilrea had never had serious cause for complaint, even as the rest of Stewjon descended, district by district, into outright rebellion. Most of the planet was worked by machines, now, but not here. He'd kept them safe. Some even murmured that his district's compliance – his negotiating – had saved the entire planet from the ravages of a Death Star's laser. That should be more than enough for anyone.
He raised his eyes and stared up at the stars. So why did he feel so much like there was something missing? Why did he feel such regret now, at the end of his life?
His sister had laughed when he'd confided in her last week. "Bennie," she'd said, "I always told you you should find yourself a girl. No one can be happy on their own forever. Not even someone as antisocial as you."
He'd teased her right back at the time, and spent a few days considering what she'd said. It was true he'd never married, that he had no family of his own now, but the idea – that at seventy-seven he'd suddenly developed the longing for romance he'd never had in his youth – was laughable. Regret over never having children, though... That could almost fit. He'd been an honorary uncle to nearly every child in the village, he'd taught most of them their sums and letters. He'd cared for more children than he could count, but none of them had been his own. Over the years he'd wished once or twice for that to change, but none of the various war orphans of the village had ever fallen to his care, and he'd never taken any steps to change that.
No, he decided, that wasn't it. He would have been happy to lead that life, but it wasn't a regret. Having a child of his own would've prevented him from being quite as close to all the other village children, from sheer lack of time, and there wasn't a single conversation with them that he'd sacrifice.
There wasn't anything he'd sacrifice, in fact. His life hadn't been perfect, but the missteps were small, and the tragedies had been blessedly few and far between, especially when one considered what the rest of the galaxy was suffering.
He couldn't think of anything he regretted. And yet he felt regret. He felt that his life wasn't everything it should have been, even though it was everything he could possibly imagine wanting.
He focused his gaze back on the stars, and his mind flitted back to his youth, when he'd dreamed of flying among them... And with a flash of clarity, he suddenly realized what it is he'd been regretting.
He'd never left the planet. He'd never touched the stars.
It was a ludicrous thing to regret, after all this time. He was Obi-Wan Kenobi, stable, solid, reliable. He was just a simple farmer. He could never leave his neighbors, his family. He definitely was not one to go off on foolish crusades or daredevil adventures, to abandon his home and his village.
And yet he couldn't shake the feeling that if he'd left everything, if he'd abandoned his perfect life here for the deadly galaxy, somehow everything would have been better. He kept wondering if sacrificing everything that had ever made him happy would have been the right choice, in the end.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he watched a funeral pyre and smelled volcanic sulphur and his skin burned under two suns and there was one hope for the galaxy, only one, and only he could protect that hope...
With a shiver, he came back to himself. It was just oncoming senility, he told himself. Surely there was no other explanation for the sudden longing for a life he never wanted, for his sudden sense that the galaxy was doomed and it was his fault...
He took hold of his staff, and used it to hoist himself to his feet. It was past time to herd these Nerfs back into their pen.
Obi-Wan Kenobi cast one last look up at a burning galaxy, and turned for home.