Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars
A/N: I saw a tumblr post a while ago that can be roughly summed up by "do you think Obi-Wan considered taking another padawan after the war, and if so, do you think he ever grieved this unhad padawan when grieving what he'd actually lost became too much?" I immediately inflicted this on my friend Ella, to which this fic is dedicated, as this fic was born of my tormenting her.
In any case, this is intended to be angsty. I'm following a long fanfiction tradition of tormenting my favorite character. That being said, I tried not to be over-angsty while still keeping into account how traumatized a person would be after surviving something like Order 66. If I succeeded, however...well, who knows.
All dialog in the first section, sans vision, is taken from Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 5 episode 9: "A Necessary Bond."
"I will send you my bill!"
Despite everything, Obi-Wan Kenobi found himself stifling a chuckle as he swapped exasperated looks with Cody. Hondo Ohnaka, for all his conniving and thievery and irreverence, somehow managed to be genuinely likable regardless. Plus, Ahsoka and the younglings were safe, and Obi-Wan just couldn't be bothered to ruin his good mood by doing something like giving the pirate a proper scolding.
In fact, not only were the younglings safe, but they seemed relatively untraumatized. They stood in a rough circle around Ahsoka, chattering excitedly about their many brushes with death like it was all some grand adventure. They even seemed to have developed a fondness for Hondo and company - the tholothian girl particularly so. She turned to watch the pirates leave with both friendly affection and sadness at their parting leaking into her Force presence and onto her face.
It was nice to know that sort of innocence still existed in wartime, even if Hondo was out to corrupt a generation of Jedi to his nefarious ways.
The Force swirled as he observed them, and Obi-Wan's prescient sense, so long clouded by the looming darkness, cleared fractionally for just a moment. It guided his gaze to the tholothian girl and danced in the way it only did when you met someone important in your life. In fact, Obi-Wan had only felt this exact sensation thrice before. Qui-Gon. Anakin. Ahsoka. The bond of Lineage, of family.
"Come on, Master!" the tholothian girl, eleven or twelve years old now, called back to him. "We're going to be late for lunch with Master Anakin, Knight Ahsoka, Senator Amidala, and Mister Cody!"
"Relax, Katooni." Obi-Wan chuckled, following her at a leisurely pace. "We have time. Unfortunately, Anakin has resisted any attempts I've made to encourage him to be punctual."
"Sorry Master." Katooni smiled sheepishly, wincing. "I'm just excited."
"It's alright, Padawan. I'm rather eager to hear about Ahsoka's first solo mission as a knight myself. Rex is going to be so disappointed that he's off planet for this."
When the vision faded, if Obi-Wan eyes were wet and his chest ready to burst with joy, well, that was no one's business but his own. It was one future out of many, yes, but the Force would not have shown it to him without reason, and oh, what a future it was. Judging by Katooni's use of "mister" instead of "commander" for Cody, not to mention the peace his vision-self had been feeling, the war was over. Anakin had raised a padawan to knighthood - a padawan who, it seemed, got to experience her last years of studenthood in a galaxy at peace - and been mastered for it. Cody and Rex and all the vod'e were free. The relief at such a future so much as being possible left Obi-Wan giddy. If his next padawan was overly fond of Hondo's mischief, so be it. A future like that was beyond worth it.
"Ahsoka," he said, walking up to the group and narrowly resisting a rather un-Jedi-like urge to pull his grandpadawan into a hug. He had no doubts that out of all of them, the trip's ordeal had been the most stressful for her. "I'm glad to see you're all safe."
"Yes, Master." Ahsoka's voice was both tired and amused. "We had quite an eventful mission."
"The most eventful since Master Yoda went to find his lightsaber crystal!" Professor Huyang cut in. The scope on his right eye shifted in a way that resembled a conspiratorial wink. Gasps of excitement came up from the assembled younglings.
"Tell us!"
"What happened then?"
"I'm afraid that story will have to wait." Obi-Wan interjected - he didn't think it'd do to fuel these younglings adventure-seeking fire with a story about the absolute havoc Master Yoda had wreaked when he was their age. They didn't need to be flinging themselves headlong into danger again, no matter how splendidly they'd handled it this time. "For now, be proud. You've survived an ordeal few your age could."
He ignited his 'saber, bowing it's end into the center of their circle.
"Welcome home, young Jedi."
Obi-Wan's heart swelled to bursting as he watched the younglings draw their 'sabers in tandem, his eyes lingering on Ahsoka and Katooni to his left. If there was a light even in the midst of this war, there could be a light at the end of it, and he would do everything in his power to bring it forth.
Some life lessons belong to a particular brand of terrible.
Obi-Wan learned his first of these at a young age, when it became clear there was a threshold in which a person stopped crying and numbness set in instead. He learned some years later that if a person crossed that threshold enough times, they stopped crying at all. Not long after that, he learned that once someone hit that point, no matter what they faced, that person would keep getting up and soldiering on even if they didn't want to.
More recently, Obi-Wan learned that there never were no more tears to cry. Instead they lurked dormant, waiting to be unlocked by the right key.
Most recently, Obi-Wan relearned that the future was always, always, in flux, and that no matter how often what one foresaw came true, prescient visions were never definite.
Which led back to the crying.
After Qui-Gon had died, he'd been thoroughly convinced that he'd had no tears left. He'd been proven spectacularly wrong at the war's end. He had broken down holding Luke and Leia on the day of their birth, Padme so newly dead her body had still been cooling. He had cried for the Order, the only family he had ever known. He had cried for Anakin, who still occupied a strange place in his heart between brother and son. He had cried then for Padme, torn too soon from life by the husband she had trusted, who would never be able to see her children grow, and then finally for the children themselves, born into a galaxy of darkness.
Even after he'd exhausted himself so much he could barely breathe, there was still so much to mourn.
Ahsoka, cast out of the Order that had been as much her only family as it had been his, was given her share of his tears and grief his first night on Tatooine. He had cried for the clones that night as well, only to find the mourning insufficient after visions of force compulsions and chips and just how fully the vod'e had been slaves - that they'd never had so much as a chance for freedom no matter how fiercely the Order and Padme and Bail had pushed for it - left him too weak to stand.
None of that, however, had prepared them for this.
He had known that the Trials of the Whills would be exhausting - Qui-Gon's voice, calling to him from beyond the pyre, had told him as much - but no foreknowledge of the fact could prepare him for the reality.
He had known he'd be unable to leave Tatooine, to venture to Dagobah and the Wellspring of Life and Moraband as Master Yoda had for his trials, and so Obi-Wan had followed the Force to a cave system, eventually descending so far from the surface the air no longer burned. There, sitting in the ribcage of a great krayt that had died an age before, he had meditated.
On the fourth day, the spectral forms of the Whills found him, and his trials began.
He faced the darkness in himself first, sat across a table from a version of himself that was nothing but his anger, prejudice, and hubris. He faced his fear second, watched helpless as any hope the galaxy could be free of imperial rule crumbled away. Each trial, for all that he overcame something with them, left him shaken and shaking to the point where sitting in a meditative pose was no longer an option.
Then, in the third trial, he faced temptation.
He was in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. It was unblemished as it had been when he was growing up - all thriving gardens and glittering pools instead of blaster-burns and saber-scorches and death. He felt light as he hadn't felt since before the war.
"Master, help!"
Obi-Wan jolted, reminded briefly of some unspoken darkness before resettling into calm. There was no need to worry; the cry was shrieked, yes, but it was laughing instead of desperate. A cackling Ahsoka - Force, when had she gotten so tall? - had a wriggling Katooni slung over her shoulder as she made her way towards the nearest fountain. No doubt she meant to dunk Katooni in.
"Ahsoka, don't." Obi-Wan chuckled, even as he stood to help.
Anakin, ever unhelpful, let out a "Go Snips!" from where he was snuggled up to Padme, earning a smack from her .
"Can you please be a good role model for our kids?" she'd scolded, gesturing to a Luke that was chattering away with Yoda and a Leia that was wheedling war stories out of Cody and Rex.
For a few, shining moments, Obi-Wan Kenobi forgot what was real.
He remembered when he went to pull Katooni from Ahsoka's grip. He froze, hand outstretched midway to her, to a padawan he'd never had. A padawan he never would have, because the Order was gone , and Katooni lay dead among her crechemates in the gutted corpse of the Jedi Temple.
He couldn't stay here. This wasn't real.
Then the illusion crumbled away, leaving him with only heartbreaking reality. He sat numb as the Whills told him he'd passed his trials, only barely managing to hold back his tears until after they'd faded away. He had seen a version of that paradise before in the form of a vision. He had sworn to himself that he would make it come true.
And he'd failed.
It was a long while before he could get back up again.
There were many days of Obi-Wan's stay on Tatooine, especially in the beginning, that threatened to choke him with his grief. There was no way there wouldn't be, with there being so much to grieve; Anakin, Ahsoka, Padme, the Order, the Clones, Luke, Leia, the Republic—
Sometimes, on those days, it was all too much to handle. The grief would not leave - he really needed a mind healer, for when the trauma was at its worst so too was the the effectivity of meditation, but there were no more mind healers; they were gone , just like the rest of the Jedi - but it took too much to grieve what he had known and lost, and so it threatened to drown him.
On those days, he would center himself as best he could, take what comfort meditation could give, and mourn something less tangible. It was harder to fixate on, without memories to enforce it. He'd mourn a padawan he would never have, and a future he'd never live. It hurt - excruciatingly so - but at least he could breathe.
He could sure he'd get up again when the day passed.
A/N: Not sure how I feel about the ending, but at this point I've had this in my drafts for Too Long and I'm posting it anyways. It might get some revision at some point. Who knows. Also, I know that TCW cites the spirits that help Yoda through his trials as "Force Priestesses," but I'm pretty sure it's said in other places (possibly at the end of RotS?) that Qui-Gon learned the whole consciousness-retaining after death ability from the Whills, so that's what I went with here, if anyone was wondering.
In any case, I am officially on summer break, so hopefully I'll have more things posted soon! I've got a couple of long-term projects in the works, and hopefully I'll have at least the first few chapters of them up sometime in the next couple of months. ...I'm not the most efficient writer.
Crossposted on Ao3