A/N: Cross-posted to tumblr (eirianerisdar). A companion piece to A Face in the Crowd.

For the Brother I Did Not Deserve

Eirian Erisdar

Generals.

Jedi.

Heroes.

At the height of the Clone Wars, Skywalker and Kenobi were household names across the galaxy.

Adults spoke of them in cafés and bars as Generals Skywalker and Kenobi, tracking the progress of the Open-Circle Fleet across the Outer Rim sieges by war-reels and holonet news. Senators and aides alike called them Masters, as politicians have called the Jedi for ten thousand years and more, since the Jedi Order first swore their service to the Republic.

But the young knew them as heroes.

Siblings squabbled over which would win in a full-out duel, Obi-Wan's devastating calm against Anakin's fiery resolve; friendships were formed and broken over the keenness of Anakin's sword-hand and the steadiness of Obi-Wan's voice. And yet these petty arguments bonded all the younglings the galaxy over; there was no skirmish, battle, or campaign that could not be won if Obi-Wan and Anakin were there. The fact that they were two men in an army of millions did not matter. As far as any youngling whose parents supported the Republic was concerned, the war was already good as won. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker would see to it.

It was in such a spirit that Yorrick gave his all in a terrific (and oft-repeated) argument with his best friend, Meron.

"General Skywalker leveled an entire battalion's worth of super battle droids last week on Malastare!" Meron yelled as he flailed around Yorrick's room, nearly knocking over Yorrick's neatly-stacked collection of Kenobi collectible info-cards as he did so.

"So?" Yorrick interjected from where he sat primly on the edge of his bed, crossing his arms as Meron turned to glare at him. "General Kenobi would have talked his way out of needing to fight them at all. He did as much before."

"An entire. Battalion," Meron half-shrieked, eyes aglow and looking every inch of his current eight years.

Yorrick rolled his eyes. They might be the same age, but there were times where Meron's excitement over General Skywalker's latest exploits only manifested itself in long, rambling conversations where Meron's utter hero-worship surged like the waves of Coruscant's Western Sea, beside which Yorrick's family had a summer home, courtesy of his father's position in Galactic government.

It wasn't as though Yorrick didn't admire General Kenobi as much as his best friend did Skywalker – it was just that Yorrick thought it best to express said admiration in quietly collecting Kenobi memorabilia and keeping up with the holonet news on the Open Circle fleet, instead. He may have sent a few letters here and there, but he had never received a reply, nor had he expected one. General Kenobi had a war to fight.

Meron, on the other hand, loved nothing more than to recount for the billionth time the moment where his hero acknowledged him.

"–I didn't think he'd actually salute back, you know, since my father and I were so far back from the parade line and there was so much noise going on–"

"I know, Meron," Yorrick said, a faint smile curving his lips despite himself as he watched his friend's face light up at the memory. "He saw you, and he returned your salute. Congratulations. I also seem to recall you telling me that you forgot to lower your hand until basically all of the 501st had passed by."

Face flaming red, Meron punched him good-naturedly on the shoulder. "I'll convince you Anakin's better even if it's the last thing I do," he mumbled.

"That'll take some convincing, " Yorrick grinned. "But go on. I dare you."

"I'm going home in a week. I'll have you convinced before then."

"I'm sure the Alderaani Royal Academy will be very happy to take you off our hands," Yorrick said, dryly.

That earned him another punch.

But Meron's next words were uncharacteristically quiet. "My father said you could visit in the winter. You will, won't you?"

A pause.

"That'll depend on my father," Yorrick said, earnestly, "but I'll fight both him and the RCA for it."

Meron scoffed. "The Republic Coruscanti Academy's filled with spoilt brats with their noses in the air."

"And what does that make us?" Yorrick pointed out. "Alderaani Royal isn't that much better."

"Spoilt brats with our noses completely level."

"Oh, shut up," Yorrick said, smiling.

Meron waved goodbye a week later, not having convinced Yorrick in the slightest but glad to call it a ceasefire. "May the Force be with you!" they yelled at each other, as was their custom. It made them sound cool, like the Jedi Generals they loved so much. Meron as Anakin, and Yorrick as Obi-Wan – brothers in all but blood.

The Siege of Coruscant began a month afterwards.

And another week after that, Yorrick's world fell apart with a single announcement from the newly instated Emperor.

Red-eyed and sleep-deprived, Yorrick went to school two days later to find that it had been renamed the Royal Imperial Academy overnight, and that there was a new uniform waiting for him, grey and high-collared and stamped with the Imperial crest over the left breast, claiming his heart.

He came home in his new uniform, endured his parents' proud fawning over how dashing it made him look, and stood in his room alone staring at the Open Circle posters still plastered over the walls, the imitation lightsaber in its brackets reverently hung over his desk, the rows of real flimsi books on Jedi and Republic history, and the packet of Stewjon tea he had begged his father to order for him just last month sitting before them, still unopened.

He'd been taught how to hold a blaster for the first time that day; the first lesson in a new mandatory course academy-wide.

The Emperor had said General Kenobi was a traitor, as was the rest of the Jedi. An Order now eliminated utterly and completely, in a heroic effort by the GAR that once served them.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was dead.

Yorrick crossed to the comm at his desk. It had been there, undisturbed, for two days now; the light blinking at its edge showed that there was at least one missed message there waiting for his response, but only now did he sit at his desk and flick it open.

You have ten missed communications from Meron Junshi.

Yorrick buried his face in his elbow for a moment, and sighed.

Then he keyed in his friend's comm code.

The comm channel fizzed to life, and Meron's voice issued from it, warped with static and yet clear as the day he left over a month ago.

"Blast it, Yorrick! It's been two whole days–"

"I know," Yorrick said, quietly. "I just…haven't been feeling that good."

A pause.

"I know," – and there was a telltale tremor in Meron's voice not caused by static or interference – "I can't believe it, either."

Yorrick's eyes prickled with tears – the first since he heard the news. "How…how could they betray us like this?"

"Right? I don't know how Chancellor Palpatine could have done this!"

Now that caused Yorrick to sit up, and to stare at the comm in his hand.

"What…what are you talking about?" he whispered.

"The Chancellor," Meron said, with a note of confusion in his voice. "You don't believe that…that drivel he said about the Jedi, do you?"

"Drivel?" Yorrick said, slowly. "That's not a word you would use. I would, but not you. Who's been talking to you?"

"That's not the point," Meron retorted, after a telling pause. "You don't seriously believe the Jedi betrayed the Republic?"

"I…" Yorrick began, and faltered. "I don't know what to believe."

"Yorrick, this is Anakin Skywalker," – Meron's voice quavered, and then steadied with determination – "and Obi-Wan Kenobi we're talking about."

Hearing the name set something off within Yorrick's chest. Perhaps it had been there since two days ago, or longer, and he had read about the five stages of grief before, but for the moment, he was well past denial and fully into anger.

"I know!" he yelled, and cared not that his voice cracked dangerously on the word. "What do you think I've been doing these two days? I've been thinking. That's all I've been doing. I haven't slept. I haven't eaten. I went to school today and everything's the same but also different and we're not allowed to talk about the Jedi any more, and the teacher played this audio recording from the Emperor's office that showed the Jedi trying to assassinate him," – Meron yelped at this but Yorrick plowed on, relentless – "and then," he shouted, as the tears spilled over his cheeks and scalded invisible scars down to his chin, "I come back home, and I look at my walls, and I realise that I've got enough illegal posters and things here to warrant my arrest. Do you understand me, Meron?!"

A long, long silence.

"I do," Meron said, quietly. "But audio files can be edited, you know that. And you knew Obi-Wan Kenobi as well as I knew Anakin Skywalker."

Yorrick barked a bitter laugh through his tears.

"Did I, really?" he murmured. "And did you?"

"Yorrick–"

"The Chancellor was crying for help," Yorrick was sobbing, now. "And General Windu just told him not to resist his own murder. Treason. What am I supposed to say to that?"

"The Jedi didn't do this," Meron said, helplessly. "I can't tell you how I know. But I do."

That did it. "You don't know that because you're not a blasted Jedi, Meron!" Yorrick shouted. "And neither am I! We never were, Meron, and be glad we weren't, or we'd have betrayed the Republic and been executed like all those traitors deserved."

Meron was silent for a long, ugly moment.

And then: "You don't mean that."

"I do," Yorrick said, wiping his nose on the pristine sleeve of his new uniform.

"Yorrick, I don't want this." Meron sounded far, far older than his years. "But I see I can't convince you."

"I don't, either," Yorrick said, straightening although he knew the other boy could not see it – reaching for his uniform cap as though it would lend him strength. He placed it on his head, and felt steadier than he did a moment before. "But this is how it is."

Meron's breath was loud through the channel static. "Fine," he said, and there was such a wealth of control in that word that Yorrick felt for a moment ashamed. "We'll talk later. May the F–"

Meron cut himself off with a sharp inhale.

Yorrick stared at the comm. The words of their familiar greeting and farewell echoed through him. He let them go.

"Goodbye, Meron," he said instead.

"Goodbye," Meron said, and as the comm channel collapsed, it caught the beginnings of a sob.

Yorrick stood, and placed the comm back on his desk.

And then he crossed to the nearest poster on the wall, grasped its edge with the sleek leather of his new uniform gloves, and tore it down, uncaring of how it split neatly in the middle, dividing the open circle insignia upon it exactly in two – a rending that left a chasm between them.

Yorrick repeated the motion again and again, broke the lightsaber on the wall over his knee, hurled the bag of tea into the growing pile of discarded objects and stared, narrow-eyed when it split open on the broken wing of a shattered Jedi Starbird.

His father, when he found out, praised him for his initiative and helped him carry it all out to the trash compactor, a steady hand on his shoulder as they watched each box go in.

Time passed.

Meron's comm number faded in his memories.

Yorrick redecorated his room in pale grey and black, opting for the bare minimum of decoration except the six-spoked-wheel of the Imperial Crest painted on one wall.

And then he focused on his studies to the exclusion of all else.

Utter conviction.

At fifteen, he was an Imperial Cadet.

At eighteen, he accepted a commission from the Imperial Navy as an Ensign.

And at twenty-eight, he was a Commander. A young one, at that, and his meteoric rise to that rank did not go unnoticed.

Being on the same ship as Darth Vader was as terrifying as scuttlebutt told, but Yorrick employed good sense and stayed silent unless he was called upon, whereupon he did every task assigned to him in as quiet and efficient a manner as possible.

He got quite good at ignoring the twist of guilt in his gut.

And then, of course, came the Death Star.

Something stirred in the depths of Yorrick's memory when he heard of the superweapon, of course. Something connected to the mind of an eight-year-old child, who loved a hero for his ability to talk his way out of a conflict without a single drop of blood spilt; but by that point in time he had learnt to treat his Orders as though he were a droid and nothing else. It protected his neck, and by extension, his parents.

And so Yorrick was on the Death Star when the Princess Leia was brought in, and he was a shadow at the rear of the bridge when Tarkin gave the order to fire on Alderaan.

Millions of voices, silenced in a matter of moments.

Meron's family home, where he and Yorrick used to play hide-and-seek amongst the gardens.

Meron.

The name chipped at the walls around his heart, and threatened to unbalance him.

Yorrick returned to his cabin and threw up.

And then he stood up, and carried on.

And then the call came in that there were intruders on the station, and he ran to his post, well-heeled Imperial Navy boots clacking on the durasteel floors, and as he ran, a sound drifted towards him; a familiar noise of plasma meeting plasma, the scream of kyber crystals and Force-borne blades.

That sound used to signify hope – hope that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker had won yet another campaign, the sound of their lightsabers a victory cry in war reel after war reel.

"Kenobi!" Vader roared, in the distance.

And with that single word, Yorrick's world collapsed again.

Yorrick rounded the corner to the hangar, and gaped as Vader's lightsaber locked with that of the old man in an unmistakably Jedi cloak.

This Obi-Wan Kenobi was not the blade-dancing hero of his childhood memories; this man's arms shook with the effort of deflecting Vader's powerful strikes, and his beard and hair were white where they once had been russet.

And yet–

He was still every inch the Master; commander of a situation where there should have been no hope. Not for him.

A young, golden-haired boy darted into the hangar, closely followed by the princess, a man who had the look of a scoundrel, and a Wookiee.

Obi-Wan glanced at them, then back at Vader, and his lips curved in the sly smile Yorrick remembered so well – the smile that said you're beaten, even if nothing seemed to be working in his favour.

The smile of calm in the face of what should be an inescapable storm.

Yorrick had always understood it. Now it felt utterly wrong that he should be on the other side of it; part of that storm, about to be destroyed by something he did not understand.

It felt horribly like guilt, and the denial of a truth that he had suppressed for too long.

Obi-Wan withdrew his lightsaber and raised it in a salute, still smiling–

–Yorrick threw out a hand before he knew what he was doing, mouth open in denial–

–and Vader cut down Obi-Wan Kenobi.

But in the ringing emptiness of the moments after it happened, Yorrick's shout lodged in his throat as he realised that there was no body.

Only a cloak.

"No!" The boy with the golden hair screamed. He drew his blaster and fired uselessly at Vader, even as his companions yelled at him to join them on the ramp of battered transport.

They were only metres away.

Yorrick should probably have drawn his weapon to stop them. He didn't.

He turned, instead, as what seemed to be an entire battalion of stormtroopers raced past him; as he heard the firing of the transport's repulsors, over the lash of blaster-fire.

Yorrick found his way to the nearest separate hangar, climbed into a shuttle with nothing on his person but his uniform and his regulation blaster, and set off. It helped that in the chaos, he managed to get to hyperspace with only a few scanting brushes with the Death Star's turbolasers.

And then – when the star-studded expanse of space beyond the viewport morphed into the blue-white streaks of hyperspace – only then, did Yorrick allow himself to weep.

Months later – after a long circle of the Outer Rim and a delicate situation involving many repeated yellings of "Don't shoot! I'm a defector! A defector!" Yorrick found himself, at last, on a Rebel base, having gone through a very grueling interrogation courtesy of Crix Madine.

At least he'd proven his loyalty was genuine.

He asked around if anyone had heard of a Meron Junshi. It was the barest sliver of hope, but the last time they spoke when they were both children Meron had seemed on a one-track road to the Rebellion even if Yorrick had not known enough to suspect then.

"Junshi? That's an Alderaani name," one pilot said. "I think you'd be better off finding–"

"Junshi. Meron Junshi," a clear, soft voice said behind him.

Yorrick turned, and his eyes widened.

Princess Leia smiled at him. "And as I keep telling every new recruit, I don't bite." She led him to a quieter corner, and her face grew gently serious. "How did you know Meron?"

Did.

Past tense.

He watched her watch him take the news.

"He was by best friend," he eventually said, although it felt like a lie, now, after twenty years of silence. "He was a brother to me, and I–"

Her brown eyes softened further. "You're Yorrick. He spoke of you often."

All the breath left Yorrick at once. Tears started at the corners of his eyes. "I owed him an apology. Now I won't have a chance to say it."

"I'm sorry," Leia murmured. "He died on the Tantive IV – my ship. He died protecting me and the plans I held for the Death Star."

In a way it made sense. Meron had spent so much of his childhood in hero-worship of Anakin Skywalker that it was fitting that he should die as a hero. Yorrick had loved him so much as a brother, like Obi-Wan did Anakin – but Obi-Wan had never spoken it out loud, either. Yorrick knew it with utter certainty.

How deluded Yorrick had been, to throw it all away on a lie.

Yorrick dashed away the tears. "We were closest during the Clone Wars. His role model was Anakin Skywalker. Mine was Obi-Wan Kenobi."

Leia smiled at that. "As half the younglings in the galaxy did, it would seem."

Yorrick laughed. It was a weak, feeble thing from too many years of disuse, but it would do.

Leia took his elbow in a soft grasp. "I think you should meet someone."

Yorrick allowed her to lead him into another room, where the blond-haired young man whom Yorrick had also seen on the Death Star was sat, tinkering with a pile of mechanical scraps.

"Yorrick Calder," Leia said, "allow me to introduce Luke Skywalker."

Skywalker.

Luke extended a hand with a blinding smile – the same smile Yorrick recalled from the war-reels, two decades before.

Yorrick shook Luke Skywalker's hand, and felt a weight lift off his chest as he did so.

And for the first time in twenty years, he was convinced that there was something to hope for.

END

A/N: If you want to read a companion fic to this from Meron's perspective, go to my profile for A Face in the Crowd. As always, thanks to everyone who reviews and favourites!