Summary: Obi-Wan has only been on Tatooine for a month before his house is robbed. The thieves take the old wooden trunk where he'd placed Anakin's lightsaber and Ahsoka's Padawan beads. A Jedi shouldn't need attachments, but Obi-Wan knows he'll do almost anything to get back the only things he has from his family.
Notes: Thank you for all of your lovely comments! Obi-Wan and Numa in this chapter. As well as memories/thoughts of Obi-Wan & Anakin/Vader. This was originally going to be a Numa POV but has morphed into an Obi-Wan POV. Enjoy!
General in the Grand Army of the Republic
Ben.
He has always rather liked that name.
Ben. Ben Kenobi.
He prefers to leave the 'Kenobi' part behind him, but Owen has made that impossible, so here he is. Ben Kenobi. The crazy vagabond who has moved out to hovel in the middle of the Jundland Wastes, situated all the way at the edge of the Dune Sea.
No one lives out there.
'He won't last long,' the people at Dannar's Claim in the Pika Oasis, and even those as far away as Anchorhead, say sagely to their neighbors as they relax over a pint at the end of a long week's work.
Tatooine settlers are nothing if not optimistic.
Ben finds something to admire in their glum certainty that things can only get worse. Perhaps it's in the fact that they still find the strength to get up every morning to once more battle the inhospitable elements of this planet in order to just survive. Stubbornness, pure and simple. He wonders if that's where Ana—he learned it from.
Ben hastily shies away from that thought – too soon – and thinks that he could use all the stubbornness he could find because there are mornings, most mornings in fact, where he's not even sure why he bothers to get up at all. The children are safer – he hasn't let Padmé, he hasn't let Ana—him down – safer than they would ever be with him. He has already failed one gifted child, he doesn't have it in him to fail any more.
Anyway, he's Ben here. That's all he has to be. Just breathe in and out. Stay in the moment. He's here.
He's…buying a meiloorun. Apparently.
"Two for the price of one!" argues the ebullient Toydarian hawking his wares in a little canvas-covered stall at the edge of Mos Espa. Ben has no idea why he thought a trip to Mos Espa – as far away from the Lars' homestead as Bestine, the capital, is – would be a good idea today, but when he woke up this morning he'd looked around the bare sandstone walls of his small dwelling and realized he couldn't stand them. So, he'd taken his eopie and headed east.
And so here he is now. Examining a meiloorun that is at the end of its shelf life and is certainly not worth the exorbitant price the Toydarian is claiming for it. Still, after a moment he sighs and pays the aging creature, tucking the meilooruns away in his cloak.
"Thank you, thank you very much! You won't regret it," the Toydarian yells, flapping his tiny wings until he is at Ben's eye level and vigorously shaking his hand. Ben internally grimaces at the unwashed odor coming from the being, but he politely thanks him and heads on his way.
I wonder if this place has changed at all since…he was here.
He tries to push that thought away, a flash of gold out of the corner of his eyes making him turn his head as he thinks he sees Anakin's unruly curls, a vibrant, teasing male voice making him wonder how Anakin has found him all the way out here.
A landspeeder careens past at frankly unsafe speeds and as Ben dives out of the way he sees the custom-made modifications on its exhausts and he knows that Anakin would love to talk to the owner all about it…and maybe take it apart when she's not looking.
Ben feels sick. There are too many ghosts here. He doesn't know why he came.
Anakin Skywalker is dead. He only exists in the memories of his former master and in two small children he never lived to see.
And in the ruins of the Jedi Order, who took him from this planet…and failed. No, that was shifting the blame. It was Obi-Wan Kenobi who failed him. Somehow. He just…hadn't been enough. He hadn't been what Anakin needed.
Loud cursing in Huttese fills the air, and Ben realizes that he has wandered in into the middle of a congested thoroughfare while he has been lost in the past. "Echuta!" the dug screams at him.
Ben holds up both hands in a placating manner. "My apologies, friend," he says, before scurrying back towards the side of the road and out of the way of various vehicles which crowd Mos Espa. Time to return to the house, he thinks. There is nothing about this planet that he likes – not the heat, not the criminals who flee here, not the slavery which still runs rampant and Hutt-controlled, not the lack of rain or snow or any other weather but dry and burning…and he remembers Anakin, helpless on the ground from where Obi-Wan had shorn through his limbs with a lightsaber, writhing in agony as the flames caught him, burning through clothing and flesh, those beloved features blackening and peeling before the Jedi Master's eyes as the boy he'd raised, the man he'd loved screamed his hatred of Obi-Wan…
A wave of nausea takes him, and he fights it back, feeling dizzy and sick with horror and regret and grief and self-loathing.
…and not the memories.
But he is Ben now. Ben Kenobi. Obi-Wan died with Anakin.
Ben is late getting back to his…current dwelling. He senses no other presence in the wide expanse of the desert, so he is unwary as he climbs the stairs cut into the cliffside of his home. He has circled around to come up to his house from the Dune Sea, for the waves of sand look almost like an ocean under the moonlight, and the stars are magnificent out here.
It is only when he enters the main living area and sees the devastation that has been visited upon it in his absence, that his danger sense flares. The entire place has been ransacked, the meager food stores destroyed or taken, the bedding torn and cut to ribbons and…
Ben feels his heartrate pick up, his vision going spotty and a sense of numbness filling him as he realizes that the chest is gone.
The chest is gone. Small, wooden and ancient looking, it had been a gift to Qui-Gon from Master Dooku decades ago. When Qui-Gon died it passed to Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan has always placed his few belongings in it. These days it holds only Anakin's lightsaber and Ahsoka's Padawan beads. Obi-Wan always carries his own lightsaber with him, and he has hidden Qui-Gon's old green lightsaber in a secret compartment he's dug in the dwelling's walls, already having decided that one day the kyber crystal in it will pass to Luke, when the boy is ready to make his own lightsaber.
It's only been a month since his life ended, and yet he knows that he will never be able to destroy Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber. Not even for Luke.
And now it's gone. And Ahsoka…Ahsoka, their Padawan. He had been too late to help her; all he could find was her grave. But her Padawan beads had been in Anakin's room in the Temple, and he had taken them, treasured them, in memory of the bright, fierce, courageous girl who had grown into a wonderful young woman before his eyes.
He had failed her too, and now the only thing of hers he has left – the only thing of Anakin's he has left – is gone.
He has no idea how he gets down the cliff – he suspects he jumps, and the Force cushions his fall – and he has no idea how he knows which way to go, but Obi-Wan senses the crystal in Anakin's lightsaber, senses which direction it's in, and he…runs.
The thieves haven't gone far. A caravan of battered old landcrawlers with bars on their windows is guarded by the dark green reptiles who seem to thrive in Tatooine's harsh environment. Rowdy, drunken singing carries over the sands towards Obi-Wan as he pauses behind an outcropping to catch his breath. The moonlight makes everything seem strange and misshapen, but to a Jedi that presents no hardship. He realizes that the only thing he has brought with him is his lightsaber, that he hasn't eaten anything all day, and that he has just run several miles at a pace which would have done a galaxy-renowned athlete proud.
He is getting too old for this sort of thing.
He also feels anger coloring the edges of his Force presence, filling the spaces in his vision. The only belongings of those he loved which he has left, and the Force couldn't even let him keep them. These…these vile thieves have taken the only things he has to remember an entire life, to remember any happiness he once had.
How dare they.
He comes out of the darkness and he knows he must seem horrifying to them. A shape in a cloak, he probably looks like some sort of monster. The Force-enhanced scream of a krayt dragon – which he'd noticed seemed to scare the marauding Sand People – and the unearthly-glow of his lightsaber, coupled with a subtle Force suggestion blanketing the minds of these weak-willed beings and their own inebriation, sends them into panic-filled flailing.
One of them, a big, burly Trandoshan, holds Obi-Wan's wooden chest.
"I think you'll find," he says, his voice as cold and precise as cut glass, "that that belongs to me."
The Trandoshan drops the chest and flees and Obi-Wan scoops up the wooden box, feeling absurdly, desperately relieved to have it back in his possession again. He turns to go, he's done here, when a little voice carries to him out of the darkness.
"Nera?"
Obi-Wan freezes, wondering if he's now hearing things. His eyes quickly scan his surroundings, taking in a half-dozen fleeing opponents, several abandoned landcrawlers, ten or so rough, unsavory types who have found their weapons and are closing in on him as he stands there trying to place the voice.
"Nera!" It's a joyful voice, childish, and filled with recognition.
Brother.
He thinks again of Anakin, of the words he shouted at him on the banks of a river of lava on Mustafar. But this voice is younger, the word Twi'leki, not Basic.
And then Obi-Wan finds her. Numa is older than when he last saw her, and she is certainly dirtier. She's dressed in skimpy rags which show off her childish body in ways that were extremely inappropriate, her lekku were tied with some type of crisscrossing ribbon – ornamentation – and there were chains around her wrists and ankles. She was behind the bars in one of the landcrawlers and there were dozens of other Twi'lek females, of all ages, crowded in there with her.
"Nera!" And it's a warning now, as the slavers raise their weapons and open fire. Obi-Wan picks out two of them and knows they're Zygerrians, sees the electric whips they prefer to wield against even Jedi, but all he sees is Numa's little face pressed against the bars, the hope and faith in her big eyes.
And he sees red. He moves in a trance, feeling the Force flow through him as he strikes out at these…these monsters. He destroys weapons and breaks bones and even the Zygerrians' favored weapons are no match against the rage inside him.
Everything has been taken away, but he won't…. he refuses to let any more harm come to Numa.
It's only her voice which breaks through the fog in his brain. "No, Nera, no!"
She must be ten cycles by now, he thinks, somewhat analogous to six standard years old. Ryloth's orbit around its star was faster than the standard calendar.
And he realizes that his lightsaber is at the throat of one of the Zygerrian's, as he holds her in place with the Force, and that he is very close to cleaving her head from her body.
Numa's concern, her concern for him, is flowing into the Force, and the rest of the slavers are injured or unconscious around him. She's an unarmed prisoner, Obi-Wan tells himself. It's not the Jedi way.
"Do it," the Zygerrian woman spits at him, her golden eyes filled with fire and hatred. "You will never defeat us. We will just return."
Obi-Wan looks over at Numa and she's watching him with wide eyes, no fear just…trust. He's no longer a Jedi, no longer Obi-Wan Kenobi, but for a moment he wants to be. If only just for her. He closes the lightsaber and steps back but continues to hold the slaver up in the air with the Force.
"If you ever return here," he warns her, and considers his words. "There will be a reckoning," he says slowly, and he watches the way the woman's eyes widen, fear flickering at the edges of her Force presence as she realizes how deadly serious he is.
"Take your friends and go," he tells her, and then thinks no more of her as he frees the prisoners. Numa throws herself into his arms, her own thin little arms tight around his neck, and for a moment, just a single moment, as the Twi'leks converge around him in a happy babble of thanks and excitement, he is Obi-Wan Kenobi, General in the Grand Army of the Republic once more.
Notes: Sorry for the small amount of Numa in this. She was originally meant to be the main part of the chapter, but I got lost in Obi-Wan's grief and memories of Anakin (it's a problem how endlessly fascinated I am by their relationship, lol) and by the time she entered the story, it was nearing its end. Ah well. Let me know what you think of it anyway? I don't know, there was a theme to it, but then I kind of wandered off into another theme. I might edit it more later.
I always loved the line that Owen said to Luke, about how Obi-Wan died the same time as Luke's father, and so I tried to combine it with Obi-Wan's internal narrative in "Time of Death", where he says he was once a Jedi – how he didn't feel like a Jedi during his time on Tatooine – and that's how this chapter was born. Obi-Wan's dealing with all this anger and grief and self-recrimination and Numa – saving her, the good memories she brings back of the Clone Wars – is a way for him to gain a little balance back.
And yup, the Toydarian is Watto, if anyone got that reference. Yes, I know Numa never called Obi-Wan 'Nera' in the show, but I feel like she associates him with the Clones, so it wouldn't be too far of a stretch.