Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden.
But even a Jedi craves to be touched.
He feels it as the heat of the Tatooine desert envelops him in a crushing grasp, pressing down on his lungs until it's difficult to draw breath. He feels it in the relative cool of the abandoned home he slowly makes his own. He sweeps the drifts of sand that have blown in to bury the remains of the unfortunate settlers who had come before him and he wonders what became of them. Had they succumbed to the realization that the dessert would be ever relentless? Or had the decision to leave be made for them?
The solitude gives him time, which is a luxury he had craved only weeks ago. The time might have given him distance from carnage, from suffering, the time spent in meditation, lost in his thoughts, lost in the Force; it could have been a respite from pain.
Now, time is all that he has.
He uses it to perform his menial tasks, making his dwelling habitable, though he cares little for comfort. Cleaning away the layers of dirt and sand, crusted inside and out from months of neglect, gives him focus, allows him to tell himself that he cleans some of the guilt from inside of him. It becomes a walking meditation, each stroke, each scrub bringing him closer to being one with himself, though not with the Force.
He no longer hears Qui-Gon's voice moving along the waves of heat as he had in the first days of his exile. Even the presence of his former Master is not enough to drive away the pangs of failure, of loneliness. He is loathe to admit it, but even he, a Jedi Master and former General of the Republic army, feels alone, so desperately alone without his brother.
Tonight, he walks home across the desert as the suns dip lower across the horizon. He moves slowly and methodically, each footprint fully formed in the sand; he is in no hurry to arrive at home. He has gone to observe the child, as has become his custom each night. Luke Skywalker never leaves the arms of his aunt, tied across her chest with long strips of fabric; Kenobi sees the care and the love afforded to the child and it brings both relief and pain. He aches for the child to be without a father; perhaps he aches more for himself.
As he returns to his dwelling tonight, he lets the pain go, feeling it pulse and then breathing it out. Suffering. He will not allow himself to succumb. He floats now without feeling, breathing out whatever comes to his mind.
The desert is vast, and he must be safely indoors before night falls. Even in this place, where death and self defense are a way of life, he must not draw attention to himself; he must not take a life. The distant call of a krayt dragon does not quicken his step, but he registers it and he allows his senses to return to the present. The sound appears to come from the direction towards which he travels. He makes the decision to continue his pace.
There is no such thing as twilight in the desert, the twin suns continuing to bake the sand; looking closely as they slowly disappear, the angle of the light reflects upon the sand at the top of the dunes, resembling shining glass for a moment before the moment changes.
He has nearly arrived at his home, monitoring the sound of the krayt as it grows louder with every step. It is closer to his dwelling than he feared. He can see the prints in the sand, and counts himself fortunate he had not been present while it waited for him. He thanks the Force as he enters the little hut and the door closes behind him.
The ritual of heating water to prepare his food is more a habit than anything else. As he waits for the induction heater to do its work, he sits in the pod chair, adorned with a ragged cushion that had been left by the previous owners and almost closes his eyes before a mewl coming from the seat causes his eyes to snap open again.
He turns in confusion and sees a small, furry creature curled in a ball on the cushion, its face hidden, its body trembling. Staring in confusion, he kneels down to face level and examines it, wondering how it had found its way inside. He feels waves of fear in the Force, and the creature mews again as the sound of the krayt dragon travels across the wind. Kenobi hesitates, realization pouring over him as the water bubbling in the container across from him hisses as it overflows onto the cookspace.
He whirls around, snatches the container off the heat, sloshing the water on his hand. A grunt of pain escapes him, and when he turns again, he can see the little creature has lifted its head to look quizzically up at him. He can see now that it has tiny pointed ears, a face covered in fur, and green eyes that stare unblinkingly. A moment later, it stretches and stands, hopping down onto the floor, its emaciated body showing a tail that had been curled around its legs. It walks around the room, looking at his meager possessions, seeming to search as it sniffs and turns up its nose. It bats one paw at the blanket that lies haphazardly over his bed and drags towards the floor before it decides to claw at it, whipping its paw around as though it is a threat, something resembling a tiny growl coming from its throat.
Kenobi stares at it, one hand covering the scald between his thumb and forefinger. He wonders if he should take the threadbare piece of blanket, but has a suspicion the creature is stronger than it looks. It pulls the cloth from the bed and seems to wrap it around itself before abandoning that effort and making its way onto the bed with a carefully placed leap. It curls into a ball once again, the blanket clutched between its paws, and lays its head down again, closing its eyes.
A sense of calm falls over the Force as the creature sleeps. Kenobi looks on, unsure of what to do. Finally, he returns to the cookspace and prepares his supper once more. The powder mixed with water rarely looks appetizing, and tonight, he barely notices as he sits in his pod and stares at the creature as its back rises and falls with each breath. All at once, he finds himself enjoying the sense of his own breath as he matches the rhythm of the little one. Soon enough he will have to decide what to do about the uninvited guest, but for now, he lets himself breathe.
He puts a bowl of water on the floor of the hut before he goes to sleep. He has no food beyond the powder that creates a thick mush, but decides to put some next to the bowl, the protruding ribs sticking to his mind.
He wakes to familiar emptiness.
Sitting up in bed, he sees the tattered blanket on the floor and wonders if the tiny guest had been a figment of his dreams, a manifestation of his loneliness. A bowl of mush lies tipped over in the corner of the room, the contents spilling out everywhere. An empty bowl sits next to it.
He rubs his eyes and looks around, but the Force has already told him that he is alone.
His trip to Mos Eisley is uneventful. It is a trip he has found a habit of making every few weeks for supplies. "Ben" has become someone that the locals no longer noticed, if indeed they ever had. He brings scraps he has salvaged from the desert to sell, everything from droid parts to the mushrooms that grew on the vaporators used by the moisture farmers. Take only what you need, he tells himself each time, leaving plenty for the farmers who are often in worse shape than he.
The load he has hauled brings good fortune, and he moves to the food stalls, as has become his custom. He purchases the powder that has become his main source of nutrition from a different stall than he had the previous time, still not ready to become noticeable to any of the merchants. Today, he notices steaks of bantha meat on display. It is a luxury he would not normally afford himself. He pauses for a moment before purchasing two. The droid behind the counter wraps it up for him in brown paper and he tucks it into his bag before he moves on his way.
It's as he walks to the edge of the city that he notices another merchant packing his wares and sees a dark blue blanket on display.
He tells himself that he's hoping for an eventuality that won't happen as he leaves half of one of the steaks upon a counter in his hut. It's nearly time for him to check on the Skywalker child; he must go now if he wants to return to his hut before dark. He becomes so convinced of his own folly that he leaves the new blanket in a heap on the floor next to his own ragged piece that he had not bothered to pick up before leaving that morning.
The door to his hut closes behind him as he walks in the direction of the Lars farm.
Owen and Beru are nowhere to be seen when he arrives at the usual time. He wonders if this confirms his suspicions that they know that he watches them each night. He had promised Owen that he would watch over them and the child, that he would protect the family with his own life. He suspects that Owen has no idea of the true danger care of the infant puts him in.
He can't bring himself to leave until he hears the cry of the child inside, and then a soft, gradual calm coming over the air as his aunt shushes him. Or he imagines that is what happens within. The Force tells him that all is well, and at least for tonight, he's willing to believe that; he finds that he's still preoccupied.
Realizing that Owen is likely to turn the security system on at any time, he takes a moment before stealing away across the desert once more.
Approaching the hut, he questions whether the hope in his gut is a whisper from the Force or simply his own desires. There is no sign of life from within the hut, though everything is quiet tonight. There is no imminence of any threat approaching. It is out of character for him to feel a pang of regret, almost a hope for something to happen. He has no real desire to go back to his solitude.
He opens the door to what appears to be emptiness. In truth, he doesn't know why he expected it to be any different than it is. He finds that he's not hungry tonight as he sinks down upon his pod and closes his eyes.
He doesn't mean to fall asleep, but the slight weight that suddenly jumps into his lap surprises him and his body jumps instinctively against what it perceives to be as a threat. He opens his eyes and look down at a familiar lump of fur in his lap, and he lets out a breath as the cat burrows a little deeper against his robes and settles down. The piece of bantha steak he had left upon the cookspace is gone. He allows his eyes to close again. The breath leaves his lungs a little easier.
He knows that he is not the one who chooses to allow the cat to stay. In fact, it is never a conscious choice for either of them. He does not attempt a name; it almost seems like an insult to have any form of ownership over it. She looks up at him from within the nest she's made from his old blanket, having scorned the new one he'd chosen, and her eyes are so wise that he cannot help but feel an attachment growing.
Compassion is central to a Jedi's life.
He doesn't know when the two of them decide to fully trust each other. The moment happens without him realizing. But one night after his return from the Lars farm, he sits in his pod with the cat in his lap and he finds that he's beginning to talk to her. His voice is cracked and dry from lack of use; there's never a reason to speak out here alone in the desert. Slowly, sipping water from a container now kept at his feet, the story pours out of him.
The guilt, the pain. The war, the massacre. The battles, the death. Anakin. Qui-Gon. The promises he'd made, the ones he had failed to keep. Luke.
As the story continues to be told, the creature looks up at him, purring softly in his lap. He tells her the story over days, over weeks, over months when it becomes too painful to continue and he goes days without saying a word again. And without realizing it, he notices the hope that Yoda had spoken of begin to dawn upon him. She snuggles close as he whispers of the other Skywalker, the secrets he must keep to protect both of the children.
She gives him permission to heal.
It's years later when Luke Skywalker comes upon the little dwelling once more, alone. His mechanical hand grips papers and books belonging to the dead Master, but also the old packets of food, the scraps of metal, the blankets, the empty water containers that made up the daily life of a Master trapped in exile. He looks upon everything with a pang of regret. He holds the older man's lightsaber and whispers a prayer of sorrow to the Force. He prays that he can be made worthy to carry on the legacy of the Jedi, his wish only to complete his studies, to complete what the Jedi had been unable to do before their death.
He feels the Force in every corner of the room. It whispers to him. He sits down to listen.
It is only when he emerges from the dwelling, days after his arrival, that he notices a small headstone a short ways from the hut. The inscription is brief, a date, the footprint of an animal. Yet, he can feel the Force radiating around it; he knows it is someone Ben cared deeply about.
He stands before the stone with his head bowed in silence for a long moment. His newly built lightsaber is clutched in his hand of flesh.
Then he looks up, over the stone, towards the horizon, towards Jabba's palace. A voice whispers through the Force that it is time to go.