He's home! And – for now – Ani's too broken to cause much trouble, but Padme and Obi-Wan's reactions are plenty emotional.
Thanks again to those who've followed, favorite-d and, especially, these folks who have given me some wonderful feedback: Raiukage (thanks again), Mo Angel, QueenNaberrie, Eldar-Melda and Zireael07. Feedback is my Force, and you guys have made sure it's with me!
Poor Ani. No worries – he's on the mend after this chapter…
Chapter 10
He's burning again.
It starts on his fingertips, a kindling that transforms his arms into matchsticks brimming with fire. The blaze crawls up his forearms, penetrates his bones and converts them to molten lead.
When it scorches through his chest, ignites his hair in a leisurely climb toward his eyes – he can see the fire's predatory path – his head thrashes in helpless panic. Stop… it won't stop! Why can he not rise from this charcoal-like footing of pellets that bite into his tormented flesh? One arm – the robotic appendage that's never really been a part of him – is the only limb that affirms his mental command, durasteel digits clawing into the shale with methodical purpose.
Why do his three other limbs not respond?
There is a voice, a familiar one. At its first note, he surges forward, optimism renewed. But his master cries something broken and harsh, and the rampaging flames muddle his words in Anakin's ears.
He's never seen such an expression on Obi-Wan. His master is not one by nature to passionately emote, but this is… terrible. Obi-Wan's face is devastatingly haunted, etched with misery and shock beyond comprehension.
For me, Anakin jolts, and the realization burns deeper than the protracted incineration of his body.
"… were my brother, Anakin … loved you!"
He's leaving now? As the sacrificial version of Anakin Skywalker writhes in agony and wails in abandoned fury, his master plucks an azure lightsaber from a gradient of smoldering ash and strides away, enveloped in a plume of suffocating ruin.
Obi-Wan is leaving him. To this pain, this fate, this excruciating death.
He's burning from the inside now, the flames melting the muscle, sinew, blood that humanize him and melding with his essence to brand him anew. The heat bubbles from his pores, creating an invisible sheen of scorching fire that starts to consume his skin, inch by painstaking inch. He cannot fight, cannot breathe, cannot muster a pebble of genuine hope.
The light cannot save him.
Obi-Wan will not save him.
If there is salvation, it must come from the darkness. Already, it beckons, nourishes, redeems. Pledge your loyalty to me, it demands as the acrid steam of his charred flesh smolders in his nostrils, coats his tongue. By word and deed, you are already mine. The Dark Side will resurrect you.
As the pain reaches a crescendo and his blistered mouth opens to answer, something unseen pelts his forehead. Blessedly cool, the substance massages the planes of his face before it morphs into a pleasant shower. Harmless grit replaces the smoke in his throat, bringing an earthy taste that harkens his mother's spicy ahrisa, daring podraces and amulets whittled from japor.
Sand. Dancing around him, encasing him in a cyclone of… tranquility. Granules wash over his oozing flesh and he cringes in expectation of sharpness, but the sand merely tickles and floats before it drapes in a silky blanket over him, creating an aura of peace.
He's always loathed the sand, its grittiness on his fingertips, particles harsh in his mouth.
Still… he hadn't noticed any of that when he'd knelt in front of his mother's gravestone not so long ago, millions of grains pressing conspicuously into his knees, swirling around him, settling in his eyes, mouth.
The only sensations other than the numb finality of death had been the comforting stroke of her fingers on his shoulder, the graze of her palm to his cheek…
"There, that's better." A breathy whisper in his ear that, surprisingly, no longer sizzles. "You're home, Ani. You're safe. You're having some dreams, but it's all right; they're not real."
You're not real, either. You never are.
Yes, he must be wandering in a spectral world to have that lovely voice so near that its proximity stirs his blood. His eyelids are languidly heavy. Leaving them closed is favorable, but he musters a blink, anyway, a gauzy image forming through a limited slice of vision.
His reward is a beatific smile that he can't help but mimic, a clumsy imitation as the warmth of her spirit envelops him. Warm, not hot. Sanguine. Radiant.
"You're a dream," he mumbles adoringly, a downhearted grin spreading in time with a wince. "You always are." The heaviness of his limbs lessens for a moment as his flesh-hand lifts to fondle a mahogany curl dangled tantalizingly close. He reaches for that one tendril, expecting the apparition to dissipate the instant he wraps her hair around his finger.
She reaches out in the same moment, touch inflaming him without a hint of distress as her palm trails up his flesh-arm in a tender glide. She caresses his forearm, avoiding jagged tears of vivid red and flaked ebony where the burns have obliterated layers of skin. She fears causing him pain, but his breathing stabilizes as her hand smooths toward his shoulder. Her devotions evince a profound shiver that radiates through his body even as they banish the darkness.
It's been achingly long since anyone has touched him with kindness.
"Stay w' me…" he pleads to the hovering angel, husky and fervent in his delirium as his fingers twist in her hair. His body is beginning to stiffen with lances of pain so acute he cannot pinpoint any particular area that hurts more than another. "Love this… dream. Please... Pad – Padme…"
But the mystical sanctuary recedes, sensations vanishing gradually into the sandstorm. He's fading, but the bliss of her fingers on his temple is too entrancing to relinquish.
Remember what makes you whole, Ani, and don't let go…
"You stay with me, Ani," she implores, but her voice is shimmering away. "Your children are waiting; there's so much of you in them both." She's distant now, and his eyelashes flutter, then rest on his pale, listless face. "Hold onto Luke and Leia. Hold onto me. I'll stay if you will."
For another breath, another moment, another night, her husband obeys.
x x
x x x x
Obi-Wan had sent Padme to bed hours ago. He suspects she didn't bother to shed her day clothes and has collapsed in a heap on her bed, a twin curled under each arm.
For three standard days and nights, they've established a tiring routine. Refresh his bandages, cajole a bit of water and gruel down his parched lips, agonize through his wheezing breaths, whisper encouragement, apply cold cloths to his feverish brow, occupy Luke and Leia elsewhere in the house.
Wait. Fret. Slowly go mad.
"… is the only child I've ever seen who holds herself with regal bearing even as she's soiling another diaper," Obi-Wan relates with a mirthless chortle. "Luke is a bit more reserved, but you should see his eyes when I take him on the speeder. They remind me of yours the first time I took you up in a Delta-7. It's not a pod racer, thank the Force. Padme would have my…"
It registers that he's prattling on like a proud father.
"I am not their father. I'm more like the eccentric uncle with a shiny sword," he tells an unresponsive Anakin gruffly, then commences to additional prattling. "The other day, Luke was running around like a wild bantha, happy as you please with his bare backside hanging out." Obi-Wan rests his chin in the heel of his hand, as if silently daring Anakin to awaken will make it so.
"Do you remember when you walked into the refectory completely naked to protest the third standard day of grainmush cakes for breakfast? What were you – ten, eleven? I know I gave you extra duties for that, but Master Yoda and I had a good chuckle afterward."
He lets the grin play out, then sobers as he thinks of the cobalt-haired infant who trundles about with nary a care in the galaxy, thank the Force. "Leia doesn't have that sense of mischief, I'm afraid. She's impulsive and downright stubborn sometimes, doesn't back down at all, even if you bribe her with a muja muffin."
The corners of his mouth tweak again. "Unless, of course, she had designs on that muja muffin from the start. In that case, she takes entirely after her mother; usually gets what she wants."
A frown creases his forehead, the strain of a one-sided conversation contributing to a throbbing in his temple. "Well, I guess that really isn't so, is it?"
If Padme gets what she really wants, her husband isn't laying pale and listless in a makeshift infirmary on the home planet he'd just as soon never set a boot on again. Oh, the ruckus that will ensue when Anakin awakens to discover fine crystals of sand lining the corners of his dressings.
If Padme's deepest wishes are realized, Anakin is truly Anakin, sans the treacherous impulses that have retreated, for the moment. Obi-Wan isn't naïve enough to trust that the dark instincts have been fully exiled.
"Here's the fun part: I don't have to hope that you'll have a child just like yourself, because you already have two. And you're not doing them much good from there. This generation of Skywalkers is a handful, and I'm getting too old to keep you all out of trouble."
Suddenly, the unpredictable winds from the Dune Sea sweep to life, scattering sand in a steady patter against the outer synstone. Just as quickly, Anakin's Force-signature flares, tendrils of kinetic energy pulsing until they coalesce into a single stream of emotion, so powerful that it projects through Obi-Wan's mind as vividly as the glow of the astral moons in this barren place.
I want to see my children before I die. I want to hold my children. I want my children!
Burdened by too much guilt, too little slumber and far, far too many demons himself, Obi-Wan Kenobi decides he's had quite enough.
"You are not dying, vape it!" the master rages, springing from his perch at Anakin's bedside so forcefully that his stool tumbles about the floor. "I didn't save you from Master Fee's cooking and Yoda's gimer stick and three completely abysmal years of Clone Wars to lose you now!"
An impressively long oration of Huttese expletives follows. Now that Obi-Wan's good and annoyed, he has a taste for it. Every iota of his frustration funnels into the obscenities, his enunciation flawless.
And, since Anakin shows no sign of needing the profanities himself, Obi-Wan takes a breath, then lets them fly again, adding bit of emphasis wherever it suits him.
Swearing feels good. A dam of his aggression released on the syllables of a few off-color phrases. Anakin would heartily approve – if he would just open his blasted eyes to appreciate Obi-Wan's disregard for his normal state of placating neutrality and stuffy poise.
His former padawan also would likely advise that Obi-Wan's imbuing far too much dignity into crass words that originated from the likes of Watto and Gardulla.
"Nothing to say regarding the fineries of profanity, Anakin? Fine. When you wake up, you can tell me the ones you use when I'm not around," Obi-Wan suggests with a slight grin, but his mini rebellion has left him oddly content.
Even moreso when he feels a nudge on his elbow. Then, Anakin's durasteel digits are scratching his skin and the boy from Tatooine is easing back into daylight.
When Obi-Wan looks upon Anakin's face again, a brilliant glow of sapphire stares back, glassy and unfocused, but present.
Blue. His eyes are blue.
Obi-Wan exhales, lightly cradling Anakin's neck in his hand. When he squeezes affectionately, the gesture feels natural. Why has he not let himself express this before? "Well. There you are, Anakin." He verbally stumbles a bit, overcome by emotions he's never allowed to surface with such intensity. "It's… good to have you home."
There's a semblance of that smart-assed grin Obi-Wan knows so well, has attempted on several occasions to humble with pithy success. If he's to curb young Leia's budding cheekiness, he'll have to be more creative...
Anakin's trying to communicate; he emits a strangled choke, followed by a dry hack that alarms Obi-Wan. The master leans urgently into his former padawan, giving his vitals a speedy check as he reaches for – .
Anakin's robotic hand clutches Obi-Wan's sleeve. The move is sloppy, but it halts Obi-Wan long enough for Anakin to croak unsteadily into his ear:
"Far… t'much dign'ty, m'ster."
Then, the gale is howling against the ratty little house on the Outer Rim, a whirlwind of sand is howling through the crevices and into everything, and Obi-Wan is howling with unabashed laughter and thankfulness and sheer, stupefying relief until his stomach fairly aches from the exertion.
"I'm sure I'll regret saying this, but Force, you are a sight for sore eyes, my old padawan," Obi-Wan exclaims, and he simply cannot contain the smile that widens until his teeth gleam brightly in contrast to the shadows of sunrise on Tatooine. "Once we get you a haircut, you might even be presentable."
It takes a heaving breath for Anakin to reply, but there's a playful lilt to his rasp. "D-doubt it."
Obi-Wan wants to weep, but Jedi don't cry, do they? They don't possess, they don't attach, they don't, they don't, they don't…
He does. In this moment of profound grace, Obi-Wan Kenobi buries his head against his brother's and lets loose another torrent of long-repressed emotion.
And doesn't care which Code he's violated in doing so.
Finis.
Yep, Obi-Wan is the first person Ani sees when he wakes. I know it would've been all star-crossed sentimental if it was Padme – and, believe me, I'm all for Ani/Padme deliciousness – but Obi-Wan's been everyone else's rock while experiencing a chain-reaction of strong emotions himself. He had to blow. And Ani had to wake up. How convenient that they did it at the same time…
But that's my take. I'm interested to hear yours…