this is a disclaimer.
AN: ties in with hexaptych and hexagram.
hexagon
I.
The freighter doesn't look like much, but she's carrying the most precious cargo in the galaxy. Obi-Wan doesn't need Galen's report to know that: his brother's presence shines, calling to him, blazing in the Force, long before the ship enters orbit above Yavin IV.
The Emperor will have felt it too, and know his prisoners have been released, and that the Chosen One is free once more.
"Solo's asked for a med team," Galen says quietly.
Obi-Wan turns his head a fraction. "I assumed so. If my guesses have been correct, then Padmé would have been put into the carbonite just hours after giving birth; she'll need one."
Behind him, Galen nods, even though his Master can't see it. "And General Skywalker?"
Obi-Wan actually winces. "Now there's a conversation I'm not looking forward too," he says, smiling sadly when he feels Galen's surprise through the Force. "Twenty-three years I've been looking for Anakin's daughter, Galen. And even now, no word. No word at all."
"The General himself will be able to tell you more - you can start -"
"From scratch? We'd have to go back to Coruscant, and you know that's impossible. I've rescued him and Padmé from the Emperor after twenty years and more but the first piece of news I give to them will be that their child is lost to them, possibly forever."
Galen pauses. "Send the twins to find her," he says.
"The Temple twins," Obi-Wan murmurs.
"They're the best, Master. They were the best long before they teamed up with Solo and Chewbacca, and now..."
Now they've brought him his brother back, and his friend, and Obi-Wan is grateful and more admiring than he'd care to admit; but the trouble is, he blackmailed the twins and their friends into taking this mission, casually threatening them with the Imperial garrison he knows has been hunting them for almost a year (and no wonder, given how strong they are in the Force), and right now they'll hardly be inclined to do him any favours.
The Millenium Falcon's ramp opens; the gathered med team presses forwards. There's a stretcher and a certain amount of shouting and confusion; Solo is snapping at someone, Leia Temple has a hand on the side of Padmé's stretcher, looking down at her worriedly.
Behind her, her brother Luke is helping a man down the ramp: a tall man, and broad, with too-long blond hair and a paler face than Obi-Wan has ever known Anakin to have before, desert-born as he is. He too reaches for Padmé, but Leia steps back and catches his hand, saying something quick and low, and even from up here Obi-Wan can see the way Anakin's head turns away from the light, blinking furiously, his eyes still sensitive.
But he lets Luke half-carry, Leia lead him away from the Falcon without a protest. For a second it burns like fire, the idea of Anakin not being physically capable of kicking up a fuss about the health and safety of the woman he loves, but then Obi-Wan notices the way the twins are looking at him, and how Leia's hand is clutching his, and the forced half-smile he's giving Luke.
"What in the world is going on down there?" he murmurs to the glass.
Galen has to take his elbow to get him to move out of the command centre and towards the stairs that will take him down to meet his brother for the first time in twenty-three years.
II.
"I hope you're not expecting an apology," Anakin says testily. Obi-Wan wishes he'd take the damn mask off, but he knows Anakin won't. Too much pride to let Obi-Wan see the extent of the injuries he inflicted on him.
"I came to say welcome back," he says innocently.
"And to gloat, no doubt."
"Anakin -"
"Obi-Wan."
His breath catches in his throat. Or it would, if he still had one and weren't a disembodied insubstantial entity of the Force.
"What was I meant to think?" he asks with remembered despair. "You went to Palpatine so fast - so completely, even after Mustafar -"
Anakin sits forward with a jerk, and though Obi-Wan has never been and will never be afraid of him, he is reminded once again why other people are. "You left me with very few other options!"
It's all too true. Obi-Wan had always thought the twins would be the downfall of their father. He'd never imagined they might, far more simply, be his salvation.
"Anakin," he says quietly, "I'm sorry."
Anakin sits back and makes an impatient gesture with his right hand, replacement for the sigh he can no longer give through the respirator that controls his breathing.
"They are with me now," he says: never could hold a grudge. His temper flares like fire and dies just as quickly; sustained enmity is for those who do him wrong repeatedly, or so profoundly that no apology is possible.
Between Anakin and Obi-Wan, apology has always been possible. The question was whether or not they recognised the need for one.
"Yes, they are," Obi-Wan agrees.
III.
Yoda is furious and trying not to show it in that Jedi way, but Obi-Wan won't budge.
"Leave them vulnerable, you do! Their father's mistake, they will make, if permit them to remain together, you do."
"For Force's sake, Master, haven't you felt the bond between them? Attachments! They can hardly be said to be two separate people! What would it do to them to be split apart? You don't even know - we could be talking about irreparable damage -"
"Hinge on this, the survival of the Jedi Order does!"
Obi-Wan draws a breath, suddenly calm. "Perhaps if we had allowed Anakin the attachments he needed it would never have come to that in the first place. I won't let you separate his children from each other the way we separated him from his mother. Can you not see that that's when it all started to go wrong?"
Where this sudden insight has come from he doesn't know, but he will not be moved, and he will not be persuaded or even ordered, and in the end Yoda is left with no choice: Kenobi takes both the twins to Tatooine, to their family, and Organa leaves for Alderaan alone, perhaps a little grieved that he cannot adopt the girl, but accepting.
IV.
They meet on a battlefield, fittingly enough.
"I hadn't ever thought to see you again," Obi-Wan says bluntly.
The Emperor arches that scarred eyebrow. "Likewise. I had no wish to have you try and kill me over something -"
He breaks off with a sigh. Looks away.
"You regret?" Obi-Wan offers.
"Of course I regret it, you damn fool," Anakin snaps.
Behind him, a girl approaching them, a young woman in her twenties, fully trained in the Force, robed in black and red.
"Father," she says, and Obi-Wan can't help but smile.
"She's got your nose."
The Imperial Princess Knight Leia Skywalker gives him a look that could drop a sentient being dead at a hundred paces: gets that from her Father too.
"Leia," Anakin says. "This is General Obi-Wan Kenobi."
Sudden amusement dances in Leia's eyes, looking between them. "Ah," she says. "May I ask, your presence here..."
For all that he's forty years older than she and far more experienced, Obi-Wan feels like an awkward Padawan again when those dark eyes meet his: as if she already knows what he's doing here and why.
There's an odd little smile playing around the corners of Anakin's mouth.
"The general consensus among the Jedi Order and the Rebellion is that an alliance against these invaders, these Yuuzhan Vong..."
"Well, I was planning on handing you all over to them as a peace offering, actually," Anakin snaps, apparently having lost his ability to handle open displays of emotion over the years - probably around the time Obi-Wan gained his, ironically enough.
Leia grins. "Luke owes me ten credits," she says. "Father, the defences are up and the shield generator should be online in ten minutes. Join us for dinner, General Kenobi?"
"And in case you were wondering, that wasn't really a question," Anakin says to him wryly.
V.
"Will they be safe here?" Padmé's mother asks bluntly.
Obi-Wan sighs. "I think so. I can't guarantee you anything, Madam Naberrie. I've done my best to block the bond between the twins and Vader; as far as I know, it's me he's chasing. If I can keep him distracted..."
"For how long? Another twenty years?"
She makes a distressingly valid point, but the truth is: Obi-Wan is running out of options, and he knows it.
Jobal Naberrie reads the knowledge in his eyes, and sighs softly. "They're my grandchildren. You can't possibly think I'll turn them away."
"I'll do everything I can to keep him away from here," Obi-Wan promises.
VI.
"It's not that I'm not flattered by all the trust and the enthusiasm and so on," Obi-Wan says. "It's just that I'm not sure I'd make a very good babysitter."
"You managed with me just fine for years," Anakin says, amused.
Obi-Wan eyes the Skywalker children balefully: Luke's climbing a tree and Leia's got Nathan on her lap showing him how to make a daisy chain and Anya is happily pulling up flowers by the roots, daisies or otherwise, and toddling back to her sister and brother with them. There's an impressive pile there already.
"There was only one of you," he says darkly.
"Look, it's two days, OK?" Anakin says. "Padmé and I will be back before you've noticed we're gone."
From his perch in the oak tree, Luke throws an acorn at his twin with frightening accuracy; it bounces off her shoulder, and Leia's glare reminds Obi-Wan of the look Anakin gets before dogfights and duels with Sith Lords and that business on Cato Nemoidia that they don't talk about.
"If you say so," he says, and starts wishing Padmé hadn't made him lock his lightsabre in the safe when he got here.