A/N: hey guys, first of all just wanted to say thank you to anyone who's left a review on this work! feedback really motivates me to keep going and posting every week. i'm sorry that the chapter lengths are kind of all over the place, I am used to writing short novella type stories and just splitting them up evenly, but this is my first truly novel-length work so bear with me as I feel my way around. there is a LONG chapter coming up next friday I can't wait to share :D :D

there are some time skips in this chapter if it isn't clear. thank you so much for reading!


Obi-Wan's muscles burn as he drives his vibrospade into the ground. The soft sand of the island, stained black with volcanic glass, belies a hard underbelly of packed magmatic rock.

Embedded in this cooled crust are veins of kyberite.

He's developed a sharp eye for the crystals' limpid faces. Perhaps the sharpest of all—he certainly doesn't need his eyes to see them. He feels their vibrant, trilling call even through the deepest fathoms of the planet.

Obi-Wan chips away around a particularly large piece of kyber. He's revealed nearly the entirety of it, but loosening it enough to pull it from the rock will take several more hours with such an insufficient tool.

In an instant he could lift it free with the Force, but Rothas keeps a cruel eye trained on the Shameful set to work in this horrid place.

It is especially cruel towards Obi-Wan, as Obi-Wan is sure he could just extend his arm and bring every single crystal within the planet to the surface.

And I would crush that place, he thinks, glancing at the dark spires stretching between the jaws of land and sky as if black strands of saliva.

Cold air dries the sweat from his back as quickly as it beads. There's always a breeze, always the incessant wind. It rolls off the sea in chilly breaths.

Nothing but skin now separates his bones from the blow. He's become a cadaverous figure like the rest of those who are given two slices of bread twice a week and water only if they fall unconscious on their shovels.

Obi-Wan forces his vibrospade deeper into the crystal's igneous shell. He squints as dust bathes his face and sharp slivers of rock fling upwards to lacerate arms insensate from continual vibration. At least he'll only feel all the little cuts afterwards, and at least large kyber such as this one are coveted. It'll earn him an extra meal, a trifling token for the amount of energy he has to expend excavating it.

His eyes scan the dark isle as he continues his monotonous task. Other Shameful litter the black sands—ghostly, remote skeletons toiling in large pits. One woman not far from him has collapsed into a pile of white sticks.

Obi-Wan thinks she might be dead.

They aren't allowed to speak to one another, anyway. If they do, they eat their bread with sand.

Rothas and Pycen are the only means of communication, if Obi-Wan is so masochistic to whip himself with their words.

Disgrace.

Shameful.

Thing.

Nothing.

A low voice resonates between his ears, No, you are my Master.

Obi-Wan smiles as his secret connection flares, the luminous link he's gripped tighter over these long few months. His light, hidden away within his being and removed from this miserable place.

Anakin.

Since Obi-Wan's tattooing, his material reality seems more and more an accessory. The constant gnaw of his stomach and the scrape of his parched throat have faded from his cognizance, and the days have become rote, sucked of color and sensation. Yet, he keeps in mind he's been afforded quite an advantage over the rest of the Shamed—he is never really on the island as he dwells in the sunny mindscape him and Anakin share.

Just by their unsolicited mateship aspects of the Force Obi-Wan's never imagined existed have revealed themselves to him. The life-energy of the Galaxy is so clear and bare.

Naked.

Thank you, Anakin. Obi-Wan puts his vibrospade down and wraps his hands around the nose of the crystal. It warms beneath his touch. The pins of his discipline shift within the flesh of his mangled wrist and vibrate with the living crystal's Force energy. Obi-Wan holds his palms there and pulls power into himself until his teeth chatter and Anakin likewise buzzes in his head.

Don't do that!

Obi-Wan laughs quietly. As a result of his new attunement with the Force, kyber crystals seem to work as batteries.

He maps the position of Sathur's small sun then resumes the motions of clearing the crystal from the ground.

Anakin settles. We are more powerful than twenty of those so-called Jedi, Master.

Obi-Wan swings a look over his shoulder at Rothas shrieking at the woman still inert on the black sand. Yes, this new power, it's earned me quite a bit of suspicion, Anakin. Have you heard anything from the Council?

They mentioned it. I've told them it is a sign from the Force, but they don't listen to anything I have to say. Anakin pauses. They want to assign me a new master.

Obi-Wan closes his eyes.

Never! Anakin bursts out. I told them the only master I will accept is you and after our child is born you must be allowed back to Coruscant to finish my training.

Anakin...

I won't complete the Trials without you, Master.

Obi-Wan sighs. He jabs his shovel furiously into the rock. I trust you won't fail them, Anakin, even if you must go through them with a substitute. But, it may not all be so bleak—Pycen doesn't seem to think the anomalies are Dark. We can only hope it's him who whispers to the Council and not that louse.

I don't know. What good could be in a man who chooses to oversee such a place?

Yes... it is hard for me to stomach that the Order allows this to go on. Perhaps they've let this get out of hand.

Furious red arcs flare around their bond. I think it's running exactly as they intended it to.

Obi-Wan doesn't want to consider that possibility.


By the time he's able to haul the crystal from its bed, the island's in darkness, and the only light comes from the windows of the Temple and the photoreceptors of a few service droids.

He covers the kyber with chromasheath. Its joyous song dims beneath the material, disappointed to be in the dark, and Obi-Wan almost feels sad—he can hear such things so clearly now, how the crystals dearly want to aid him. He thinks of the kyber in his own forfeited lightsaber left at the High Temple, and its twin lost forever to Theed's plasma power plant. He clenches his fist and can nearly feel the grip of his saber under his fingers.

He will hold it again.

As he's passing the wrapped kyber crystal off to a service droid, he meets Rothas's silvery eyes. In the dark, they gleam like poisonous drops of liquid. "You have quite the habit of finding the larger ones, don't you?"

"It seems I'm lucky," Obi-Wan says lightly.

"As if there was such a thing," Rothas scoffs. "There is only the Ashla, and you blaspheme It with every step, you disgrace!" The drops pool into thin, keen crescents. "There is a Dark source to your undue power, and we will find it, thing."

Look no further than yourself for the Dark Side, you piece of bantha shit!

"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME!"

A flash blinds Obi-Wan. A lethal hum vibrates his eardrums, the only warning he gets before two yellow blades saw the air. He jumps back, searing energy singeing the hairs from his chest.

"How dare you! Insolent maggot!" Rothas's pike once more spins towards him.

"What in sith hells are you doing?" Obi-Wan hisses, twisting away, his heart stuck in his throat. The crazed Jedi's skill with the pike is undeniable, its shoto blades whirling so fast as to be a circlet of gold light in the dark.

Rothas snarls and the ring coalesces into a single burning blade jabbing towards Obi-Wan's lower half. Obi-Wan jerks his leg to avoid being amputated below the knee and overbalances.

He crashes onto his back.

Rothas towers over him, his weapon poised above his head, its twin daggers dazzling suns in the night. His seething red lips are stretched into a grimace of hate and his colorless eyes are soaked in the solar hue of his plasma pike.

The Force bubbles within Obi-Wan and he feels compelled to lift his hand. No, Anakin, no

Spit froths around Rothas's mouth. "This is where you belong! On the ground, crawling like a filthy muckworm!"

Obi-Wan stares up at him. His fingers twitch—

Rothas barks a growl and lowers his pike. "You aren't even worth killing, you stupid pathetic thing. I'll be telling Pycen of this, and he'll rip that sithcursed voice from your throat."

He delivers a sharp kick to Obi-Wan's ankle. "Remove yourself from my sight! You truly disgust me with your very presence, vile thing."

Obi-Wan stands. His feet quickly eat up the sand between himself and the Temple.

Blast it, Anakin! How did that happen? He heard you!

No, he heard you.

I didn't say anything. You... it was you who thought that...

But you said it.

Had he? Obi-Wan can't remember moving his lips, but as he thinks on the moment, finds he can't remember at all what was said before Rothas lashed out at him.

Understanding trickles uneasily down his spine, trailed by wonder, and then a rush of indignation.

Anakin's light pulses unevenly. I'm tired, Master.

You made me say that, Obi-Wan presses. That isn't right.

It's not wrong if it's true... Anakin's rapidly declining glow sparks a sudden shower of embers. I hate him!

He is despicable, but don't do—whatever it is that you did—again.

Anakin simmers, and by the time Obi-Wan is back in his cell, his padawan has fallen asleep.

Obi-Wan falls upon his pallet and groans in pain and pleasure as he stretches his stiff limbs.

He closes his eyes. Instead of sleep, he falls into his thoughts.

With Anakin resting, the world where their minds are joined is a quiet system with a dormant sun. Obi-Wan feels small, just a dwarfling world following an orbit around a gargantuan luminescence, his surface icing over without Anakin's radiant heat.

The fact that Anakin possesses twice the midi-chlorians as him has never been more apparent. While Anakin seems nearly on the cusp of being able to look through Obi-Wan's eyes, Obi-Wan doesn't have much perception of Anakin's sensate reality, perhaps for lack of trying—it seems overwhelming to, in effect, be both Anakin and himself at the same time.

And very invasive—Anakin has spoken through him. Taken control of him.

Obi-Wan cannot begin to imagine how such a thing is possible, and worse yet, isn't sure how to keep it from happening again.

He takes a deep breath. Bit by bit he lets that unsettling thought go.

As he is just beginning to sink into sleep, a hum vibrates his eardrums.

Obi-Wan slits his eyes open. Finding nothing amiss in his cell, he turns onto his side and mashes his ear into the pallet.

The buzz grows insistent. A call. A cry. It spawns a sudden restless urge that builds in his heart.

Obi-Wan sits up with the overwhelming impulse to fix something. His fingers claw into his thin pants.

What is it? he wonders urgently. What is it?

His bond with Anakin resonates like a plucked electroharp string. Something at the center vibrates rapidly as if a bogey in a spice spider's web.

Obi-Wan's mind darts to this Disturbance.

There, is a small sphere of brilliance. It seems to sense Obi-Wan and wobbles excitedly within its trellis of glowing strands. Its presence is familiar yet perfectly new.

Obi-Wan presses his mind to this small sun. An unconquerable force runs free of his heart as they connect, galaxy-ending in magnitude, spacetime in scope.

Love.

There, is his child.


Rain comes to Sathur.

Obi-Wan shivers in his excavation pit. The constant wind touches his thin wet skin in unwelcome brushes of icy fingers. Each plunge of his vibrospade sprays him with sand until even his tattoo is hidden under clumps of black grit. The metal handle slips in his numb hands so often Obi-Wan's sure he's only several lunges away from impaling his own foot.

Yet, this morning he was allowed food. His voice is still intact, for all the time he's allowed to use it.

Today, Obi-Wan's chosen to ignore the immense crystal near him for a patch of finger-sized kyber. He doesn't relish the tension between him and the crooked Jedi across the pits—Rothas seems absolutely dour, his gloved knuckles sharply clenched around his umbrella wand, his face tilted in Obi-Wan's direction. Even from a distance Obi-Wan can see his contorted countenance.

Obi-Wan doesn't need his suspicion.

Especially now.

Hello, little one.

A dimension away, Obi-Wan hasn't wavered from the tiny wonder of light. The touch of its small mind is raw, searing, and the greatest thing he's ever beheld. At times it buzzes so strongly it's a miracle it doesn't manage to free itself from all the strings of energy holding it tight and safe. The waves of comfort Obi-Wan sends it always calm its struggle, and Anakin as well—the baby is active at night and kicks and rolls inside of him.

Obi-Wan wishes he was with Anakin.

Warmth encases him. You are with me, Master.

I want to see you. He wants to feel where their child grows in the flesh as it does in the Force. Obi-Wan knows it's wrong of him—such desires are treacherous.

But in this very moment he can't think of anything else he'd rather have.

Obi-Wan picks out little pieces of living crystal from the rock and holds them tight. They warm in his slick palm—a testament to the Light he's always drawn from. I apologize, Anakin, I'm... I'm weak...

No, Master, you are the strongest Jedi I know. And you're a good man. You always do the right thing. Anakin pauses. I'm sorry that

"Thing!"

Obi-Wan jumps at the shrieking voice and his vibrospade and crystals fall to the ground. He turns to see Rothas.

"Pick those up!" Rothas screams. "Hurry up! Master Pycen wishes to speak to you and you're wasting his time, you greedy mynock!"

Obi-Wan sweeps up the crystals with a sigh. This cannot mean anything pleasant. He wonders if Rothas has made good on his prior threat to have Pycen strip his voice from him again. He doesn't know how such a thing is possible. Had Pycen used the Force to silence him? Or was it a clinical operation?

Obi-Wan can only dismally hope it won't be like the tattooing.

He holds out the kyber to Rothas. Suddenly, the crystals are scalding hot in his palms. Their song lowers into a harsh drone, and then lengthens into a piercing, unmistakable scream.

Obi-Wan's eyes widen.

The pale Jedi hisses. "I don't want those!" He smacks Obi-Wan's hand away, spilling the crystals on the ground all over again.

"You're useless! Sith hells!" Rothas gestures sharply to his astromech. He's nearly frothing at the mouth. "Get over here, Arthree. Pick these things up and get them wrapped."

Obi-Wan feels sorry for the poor monochromatic droid that cautiously wheels over. Its paint is chipping off and wet sand has gummed up its treads.

Rothas marches Obi-Wan to Pycen's office in seething silence. Obi-Wan keeps to the front as the Shamed are instructed, Rothas a swarming presence at his back. Obi-Wan senses something is making him very nervous.

Obi-Wan stops at the precipice of green carpet, looking down at his muddy feet. "Come in," Pycen's brisk tone resounds ahead of him. "It needs to be cleaned anyway."

Obi-Wan steps in. He turns to see if Rothas will be attending this little meeting, but the pale Jedi just stands for a few moments in the doorway, his eyes slits, snorting hard breaths, before he lets out a growl and leaves them.

Pycen waves his hand and the door seals shut.

Him and Obi-Wan regard each other. With his pure robes, sharp beard, and calm composure, Pycen is everything he used to be.

"Do you know why the Order sends Jedi to this place, Kenobi?"

This question gives Obi-Wan pause. He remembers Pycen's cruel trick with the water when he first arrived.

As if sensing his thoughts, Pycen raises a long hand. "Just answer truthfully."

"Well, Master," Obi-Wan says slowly, "to become closer to the Force, to observe it without distraction. To rise above the flesh and adhere totally to the Order's tenets. To keep us from the Dark Side."

Pycen's lips stretch into an emotionless smile. "Does it?"

Obi-Wan thinks of the wraiths on the sand. Sunken faces holding hopeless eyes. Bloody hands and no hair to hide them from the rain. "We are kept from passion and greed, certainly."

Pycen stands and crosses to his panoramic window. He folds his hands within his sleeves and stares out at the Kursing Sea. "Passion," Pycen says. "Yes, giving into fleshly passions is surely a path to the Dark Side. Quite a few of you here have fallen from such simple temptation. It leaves a peculiar mark—you all wear similar scars upon your souls."

Pycen looks over his shoulder at him. "I know of your crime, the confession from your own lips."

Obi-Wan looks down at the verdant carpet.

"One thing that is always true of all who arrive here, is that they wear the taint of the Dark Side," Pycen continues. "But just the start. Just a spot of decay on a tooth. One that might be reversed with proper cleansing. Rothas and I are particularly adept at sensing this rot and its progression. That's why we've been assigned to this Temple."

Pycen's head lowers. "But as I'm sure you know, to Rothas every dot of decay is a gaping cavity. I apologize on his behalf for his treatment of you—yet, these anomalies that have manifested around you have made me question my own perceptions. They are destructive, yet seem devoid of Darkness. And there is another oddity."

Obi-Wan looks at him.

"When you arrived here there was no decay in your signature," Pycen says. "Your soul was bright. It was inconceivable to me how Obi-Wan Kenobi could plunge to the droves of the Disgraced. Yet, the Council assured me you had committed the selfish act you confessed to."

Obi-Wan stays silent.

"Much seems out of place," Pycen remarks. "Your padawan, none other than Anakin Skywalker, bears the fruit of your depraved union. The Chosen One, foretold to bring balance to the Force... You were his master, do you think this prophecy holds water still?"

"Yes," Obi-Wan says at length. "There is no question Anakin is the most powerful Forceful the Order has ever known, and he fills all the Prophecy's requisites. I trust that my master was correct in his conclusion... through all that has come to pass."

"Yet, Master Jinn left you to train Skywalker."

"Well, he wasn't omniscient."

Pycen scoffs a laugh. "Perhaps not." He turns around. There is something unreadable in his pale blue eyes. "And perhaps, you haven't done what you've confessed to."

Obi-Wan frowns. "I did," he says measuredly. "That's why I'm here."

Pycen shakes his head sharply. "I've worked here a very long time, Kenobi. Don't think me young." His vulturine eyes flash. "I cannot find the Darkness within you. You aren't polluted by passion or ensnared by selfishness. And these strange anomalies in the Force surrounding you... I've never witnessed anything like it."

"I don't know how to explain that," Obi-Wan says, keeping his voice even. He hopes Pycen isn't so adept he can tell when others lie. Though from a certain point of view, it's not a lie at all.

Pycen's jaw works as he stares at him, his eyes switching between Obi-Wan's own. Any kind of geniality has seeped from his gaze. "I don't believe you," Pycen tells him. "If you just tell the truth, I can arrange for your admittance back to Coruscant."

Whispers touch Obi-Wan's ears and he shakes his head rapidly and flexes his disciplined wrist to push Anakin's arguments away. He meets Pycen's calculating stare. "In that case, I wish I had lied."

"Something is amiss," Pycen says, studying Obi-Wan carefully. "I will know what it is."


The little sun grows. It swells large in its fastenings tying it to their bond. It thrums with electric life.

More than ever, Obi-Wan understands why the Order doesn't allow its members children. He can't deny his growing attachment to the youngling. They're yet a developing soul, but he would fight any war for them.

No matter the makings of their conception.

He wonders if they will be a boy or a girl. Which one of them they will take after.

He wonders what they will make of this strange galaxy.

All my love, Obi-Wan whispers to that tiny glowing sphere in the long nights, running his fingers over his own sunken belly, imagining what it must be like to feel such a being move within him. He thinks of how big Anakin must be now, heavy with their child.

Perfect.

His groin stirs. Obi-Wan squeezes his eyes shut and moves onto his stomach to trap his hands safely beneath him. It's merely some sort of animal response to procreating. Obi-Wan had separated himself from his alphan gender years ago and can certainly rise above these primitive urges now.

I feel something sinister in the air, Master, Anakin says between his ears.

Obi-Wan starts, and quickly snaps all his thoughts close to himself. You were asleep.

I'm so tired, but it's hard to sleep for long. I feel restless. I hope it is just the baby, but something is coming. I've been having the nightmares more often now.

Obi-Wan curls his fingers under himself. He truly hopes Anakin didn't spy the thoughts he was having moments ago.

What happens in them? he asks Anakin. Obi-Wan rarely dreams and thinks nothing of them, but he needs to focus Anakin away from his indecent imaginings.

Anakin flares. Death.