He would hold it sometimes.
Not when the world was alive and the sun burned with unquenchable vigor - when the sands blew across the dunes and wind still whispered to him, he chose to forget, to ignore the past and live only in the present reality. The reality he'd chosen, he'd created. The reality that was, in some form or another, his fault.
But when the sands were silent, when the night crept through the window on thief's feet and stole busyness away, the echoes pressed down and refused to be forgotten.
And he listened.
He listened to the ghosts of old regrets whisper in his ear, and he listened to the voices of martyrs crying out in his mind. He heard the laughter of old friends long since dead, and the reprimand of masters exiled away. The soft murmur of a forsaken lover crooned her injustices. The hollow cries of dying souls burned in his head, hotter than the sun or the stars or bubbling, burning lava.
And sometimes, if he sat long enough in the solitude of his hermit's reality, with his mind cleared of everything but the guilt, he could hear the voice of his brother. Sarcastic banter mixed with wry smiles and explosive laughter. Cocky boasts crackling over a comlink. Pent-up anger bursting like a thousand fireworks, loud and smoking and brilliant against the darkened sky until finally sizzling into the embers of an apology.
Then the voice would change. It darkened. It deepened. Rage frayed the words just as fire licks the hearth's edge, and in the vile depths of screaming words, flung at his heart like hot coals, he heard something that no brother ought to hear:
Hatred.
That's when he would stand. Shaking the sand off his lap and straightening his robes, he would go to the old chest in the far corner, walking slowly, as though the hatred spewing through his memories was no more than the gentle refrain of a funeral. And he would open the chest, and he would reach inside.
And he would hold it.
Cool metal, slick to the touch, warm to the heart. His thumbs caressing the cylinder of repressed light, and from the battle-won scratches and carelessly-earned dents of this weapon - this majestic instrument - the noise inside him quieted. Shoved into the corners of his deepest self, they made way for new sounds, new voices.
A motherless child pretending to be a savior.
A grieving boy pretending to be a master.
Clipped instructions.
Unraveling frustration.
Clear silence cast between them, unwanted but necessary.
And then, in the peace of their meditation, the gentle tones of a child's voice. Yes, burdened with humility and regret, but wrapped into it all, woven through the syllables and branded in the tone, was something else. Something soft. Something loving.
"Thank you, Obi-Wan."
With those words ringing in his ears, ancient echoes from a world he could never regain, he smiled. Fingers brushed across the slick metal of a warrior's weapon, this saber that belonged to his student - his burden, his headache, his accomplice, his friend.
He smiled as he gently put it back in the chest of nostalgia. The lid closed, the voices quieted, and once again, he was alone. The sands sifted beyond his walls of solitude. The night burned on.
And he, Obi-Wan Kenobi, returned to his thoughts. Thoughts of bygone eras and days in the sun. Thoughts of happier times and friendship and peace.
Thoughts of a master and his apprentice.