Summary: The Force rewards her favorite children.
Notes: And we're finally at the end.
endlich
(finally)
Obi-Wan knew as soon as Palpatine was dead, that Anakin could see him again. Could feel him again in the Force. That armored black head swiveled past Luke to stare at a ghost.
Luke turned to look as well and saw Obi-Wan behind him. The boy smiled, tired and relieved and stunned all at once.
"Yeah, Ben's here," he confirmed for his father.
Anakin's respirator, damaged and straining, was loud in the silence of the Emperor's throne room. The man who had once been Darth Vader said nothing, but he didn't look away from Obi-Wan either.
Obi-Wan stared back, seeing only the mask, and wondered despite himself how Anakin saw him now, with the veil of the Dark Side lifted. Was he only an old man outlined in a flickering blue light? A dead spirit of the one enemy Vader had chased across the galaxy for twenty years? A pale reflection of the person Anakin had often declared, 'That's my Master, there's no one better'? or was he nothing more than a fleeting memory of the person his Padawan had once sworn to never leave behind?
He supposed that what happened next, like what had driven the course of so much of his life, was up to Anakin.
Obi-Wan moved silently beside them both as Luke half-supported, half-carried his father down towards the hangar bays. The Death Star was under attack by Rebel forces and the abrupt loss of the Emperor's Battle Meditation had thrown them into disarray. No one seemed to notice or care when Luke and a clearly-injured Vader stumbled past them.
Obi-Wan could feel Anakin's presence curling around him again, thin, wispy tendrils which broke off and dissipated into nothingness more often than not. Where before he had been brilliant and fiery in the Force, his presence was now a sickly yellow color, lukewarm and wavering.
Obi-Wan could feel Luke's own brilliant presence, white and flaring like a supernova, wrap securely around his father's, but Anakin seemed to flinch away from this, his presence flickering alarmingly for a moment.
Obi-Wan couldn't help himself. It was entirely instinct that he reached out, his own Force presence – so different from when he was younger but still somehow the same – gently hovering at the periphery of Anakin's own.
The Jedi Master gasped when his former Padawan all-but leapt on him in the Force, the faded remnants of his familiar presence grasping and twisting around Obi-Wan's own until they were hopelessly intertwined, the embers masking Obi-Wan's full strength bursting into flame at Anakin's touch.
A single thought passed between them.
Warmth.
"Are you alright, Ben?" Luke asked worriedly, eyes darting between his father and Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan cleared his throat, moving around to Anakin's other side now that the hallway was clear of anyone else except him, and Luke and a former Sith Lord. He reached out and hauled Anakin's metal arm, the one Luke wasn't holding onto, over his own shoulder, helping the boy support his father's weight.
Anakin's breath rasped and stuttered for a moment, those metal fingers curling around Obi-Wan's shoulder, as though he was substantial and not a long-dead spirit.
The Jedi Master could feel the shock pouring from both Skywalkers. He smiled his most enigmatic smile, he just couldn't help it. "You don't know everything about the Force, my young Padawans," he told him. "Neither of you."
And all three of them could hear Master Yoda's merry laughter echoing from the netherworld of the afterlife.
The moments that came after were hard for Luke, as Obi-Wan knew they would be.
Leia? Anakin said silently, asking him for the name of his daughter, but it was a question to which he already knew the answer. Obi-Wan's silent nod seemed to confirm his worst fears, for he did not look over at the Jedi Master again as he tried to comfort his son in his last moments, before fading away in the boy's arms.
Obi-Wan faded away as well, leaving Luke alone. He did not want to, but Anakin needed him and as always, it was really a choice.
&...&...&...&...&
Anakin, Obi-Wan called into the netherworld of the Force. Nothingness answered him.
Anakin!
For a moment his heart stopped – he shouldn't need it as a ghost, but some habits were hard to break – and the icy breath of nothingness threatened to swallow him whole.
ANAKIN!
Master? A small voice; scared and alone.
Anakin's Force signature was still so unfamiliar, so faint and clouded by darkness, that Obi-Wan would never have found him, would have lost him forever…but Anakin reached out to him, held on and didn't let go.
That had to mean something. Didn't it?
&...&...&...&...&
"Where are we?"
Anakin's voice was as it had been the last time Obi-Wan remembered him as Anakin Skywalker. His face and form were the same too, blue eyes unclouded by the Sith, soft curls framing strong, handsome features and a tall, powerful body that looked coiled for a fight. The only thing that was different was that he had two whole hands instead of just one.
Obi-Wan's smile came without his permission and he wondered whether it was as blinding as it felt. He felt the years drop from him quite without conscious thought, so that he looked like the Obi-Wan Kenobi a young Anakin Skywalker had known.
Anakin's hands curled into fists and his eyes – his blue, blue eyes, thank the light – were wide and caught somewhere between fear and anger. His Force presence whipped around him like a storm, murky-grey and filled with small, coarse particles that – if Obi-Wan didn't know better – he would have sworn was sand.
"Where are we?" Anakin demanded, the menace of Vader held back in his voice.
Obi-Wan cocked an eyebrow, unimpressed. "We are…in-between," he said, at his most enigmatic.
And Anakin…Anakin rolled his eyes.
And it was glorious.
"Very funny, Master," he said, and then seemed to realize what he had done. "Um," he began, looking so much like a young Anakin who had accidentally revealed more than he wanted to that Obi-Wan's traitorous heart did a little leap for joy. Oh Force, don't make me lose him again.
Obi-Wan tore his eyes away from Anakin's slightly sheepish, beloved face, and out towards the landscape around them. They stood under a blue sky, small, fluffy clouds darting high above them in a strong breeze. That same breeze ruffled through their hair and simple, Jedi robes, and whipped through the tall greenish-brown grasses which covered the ground before them all the way to the horizon.
The only thing that marred this uniform scene was a small, dark-green blob far to their right. Even as they watched, the ground seemed to rush before them and the dark-green blob grew in size and nearness until they stood beneath a towering row of hedges, a tall, forty-foot wooden door reaching for the clouds above them.
Anakin glared at it suspiciously and jumped when those great doors swung outwards.
Inside was a dark tunnel, all of hedge-row, which twisted out of sight. "A maze," he said, flatly. He swung around to face Obi-Wan, his arms crossed before his chest. As usual, he tried to hide his fear beneath anger. "Is this a test?" he demanded.
Obi-Wan felt his own fear – fear that Anakin wouldn't see, wouldn't find some self-awareness, even here at the very end – and ignored it. This wasn't about him. "A test for what?" he asked calmly.
Anakin glared at him in silence, before turning to walk through the doorway. His back was stiff, and he looked like he was expecting an attack from every quarter. Obi-Wan watched him go and wanted to say so many things to him: 'Be calm, Anakin, and you will find a way'; 'Listen to what the Force is telling you'; 'I know you haven't forgotten everything I ever taught you'; and worst of all, 'Please don't leave me.'
The Force whispered from the past: He won't let me down. He never has. Obi-Wan's voice, as he defended Anakin to Yoda and Mace Windu before everything had gone so horribly wrong.
"Anakin!" Just that. His name.
Anakin swung around then, his eyes wide and his fear bleeding into the Force. "Master! You'll still be here, won't you?"
But the doors closed before Obi-Wan could respond.
The Jedi Master sighed and tried to control his own fear, stepping back several feet before kneeling down upon the grass, facing those wooden doors, and vainly attempting to meditate.
&...&...&...&...&
It might have been twenty minutes or twenty years, but when Anakin came through those doors again, he went straight to Obi-Wan. The Jedi Master stood up to meet him, noting his drained face and weary posture, but noting also the way his Force presence was brighter, clearer, cleaner, then when he had gone in. Whatever the Force had shown him, whatever trials he had had to pass through, Obi-Wan only knew that they had helped him, made him stronger.
Obi-Wan reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder, watching Anakin's eyes close in wordless relief, his entire body releasing his tension at the Jedi Master's touch. "I'm proud of you, Anakin," he said quietly.
Anakin flinched even as he tried to lean into Obi-Wan's touch, desperately craving more from his Master. Obi-Wan wondered if Palpatine had ever had a kind word for his apprentice, for all those years of loyalty and obedience. The Dark Side took, he knew, it did not give.
Anakin's eyes opened then, their blue depths determined and hot on Obi-Wan's own. "I'm sorry, Master," he said, the words wrenched out of him, clearly not strong enough for what he wanted to convey. "I'm so, so sorry."
Obi-Wan dropped his hand, had to look away from Anakin's bleak expression for a minute.
"Love never blinded Qui-Gon, or Yoda or Mace or even Luminara, no matter how much she loved Barriss. But it blinded me," he admitted, feeling an old shame flood him again. "I never thought…" he trailed off. He didn't have the strength, even now, to associate the beloved, familiar being before him with that of the monster he had become and stayed for decades.
"That I could kriff things up so badly?" That voice, Anakin's voice, wavered and a bottomless pit of despair and self-loathing lay just beneath the pitiful attempt at humor.
Obi-Wan felt a brief, unwilling swell of amusement even as he reached out and placed his palm against Anakin's cheek. His Padawan's attempt to stave off the darkness he had been lost in for so long – now that Luke had reached him and maybe, just maybe, because Obi-Wan was with him for at least a little longer – was as painful as it was laudable. Stay with me, he begged silently.
"No," he admitted, making his voice as light as he could, wry acceptance threading through the words. "I always knew you would kriff something up someday that even I couldn't fix for you."
Anakin, his blue eyes as fierce and desperate as his Force presence, tears standing in their clear depths, gave a half-sob, half-laugh and then he was in Obi-Wan's arms, throwing himself into the Jedi Master's embrace with such strength that Obi-Wan stumbled back a bit, even as his own arms grabbed Anakin to him painfully hard.
They clutched at each other, finding more shared grief than pleasure in each other's presence at first, and Anakin buried his face in Obi-Wan's shoulder even as sobs wracked him and the Jedi Master held him through it all.
Anakin's voice was a hoarse, barely-there croak when he spoke at last. "But you did fix it." His sudden bark of laughter startled Obi-Wan. "Stars you even fixed that." There was wonder in his voice as he pulled back a bit from Obi-Wan, his bright sky-blue eyes roaming the Jedi Master's face with the same wonder which filled his voice. Tears still streaked his cheeks, but his fingers came up to stroke Obi-Wan's cheeks, to tangle in his hair, as though Anakin couldn't really believe he was here. "You saved me."
"Luke saved you."
Anakin shook his head. "All those years I held on for one reason."
"Revenge," Obi-Wan said softly, feeling the pain he'd felt on that riverbank of lava on Mustafar fill him all over again. I hate you, Anakin had shouted and Obi-Wan heard those words every night in his dreams.
"Yes," Anakin agreed sorrowfully, "but it was simpler than that." His eyes burned into Obi-Wan's, two blue shards of kyber. "I knew that someday, somewhere, I would find you again." Those fingers stroked against Obi-Wan's skin again, distractingly. Anakin's voice was desperate with the need to make Obi-Wan understand, but the Jedi Master thought he was beginning to. "I was lost," Anakin admitted, "and I couldn't find you. I wouldn't find you," he admitted, "because I couldn't admit what it would take to truly find you. And it got all tangled up with hatred and…and despair and revenge…but I knew that one day you would find me."
He laughed again, half in wonder at this revelation and half in disbelief. "It wasn't even a hope. I just…knew." He stared off into nothing, perhaps going over all those dark years once more in his mind. "I was always waiting for you," he whispered.
His eyes met Obi-Wan's again, and the depth of feeling in that clear gaze made Obi-Wan's heart beat fast and his breath catch with a feeling he had not felt since…
"Luke and…and Leia," Anakin's voice choked up and he looked overwhelmed for a moment. "Thrawn and Ahsoka and Cody…and the Jedi. So many Jedi…they all tried to reach me. Like water wearing away rock. And I guess it worked. Not even I could stand against all of them," he admitted, still so unconsciously arrogant.
Obi-Wan snorted.
Anakin's wry smile acknowledged Obi-Wan's unspoken thought, but he didn't let it deter him.
"But you," he said, that wonder back in his voice, his fingers skating over Obi-Wan's auburn beard, his slightly-parted lips, "you loved me," he said, as if even now he couldn't believe it. "And in my darkest moments, you gave me hope. You gave me my son." His eyes were fixed on Obi-Wan's own, as though trying to peer into his soul. "You love me. And you loved my children."
"They were yours," Obi-Wan said simply. "In my darkest moments I wondered if there was something wrong with me, that I could never let you go." And then, self-deprecatingly, "Who's the more fool, the one who commits evil or the one who loves him despite it all."
Obi-Wan swallowed and tried to organize his thoughts under the intensity of Anakin's gaze, his Force presence which grew brighter and more powerful the longer they stood together, Obi-Wan's hands anchoring Anakin to him as the younger man continued to touch and caress.
"But I couldn't save you Anakin," he admitted, his greatest failure, his deepest regret. "I tried, and I failed."
Anakin was quiet, letting Obi-Wan get the words out, but the Jedi Master could feel his denial across their bond – their bond, when had that happened? – as loudly as if Anakin shouted it. "It's true," he insisted. "The only thing I could ever do was love you."
Always. But he couldn't say that part out loud.
There was so much fear in Anakin's eyes now, mingled with desperate hope and that ever-present awe which widened his eyes and made their bond spark with flickers of light.
And maybe it was Anakin's awe at Obi-Wan's love, and maybe it was that Obi-Wan had thought about what he would do if he ever had Anakin – his Anakin – before him again, every single moment since he'd seen him kneel before Palpatine and it had shattered Obi-Wan's heart, but the Jedi Master tugged Anakin down towards him by those unruly curls and kissed him.
It was a terrible kiss, Obi-Wan had to admit. Then again, the Jedi Master had never actually kissed anyone before, not even Satine, so he thought he should be allowed some slack. He kissed the side of Anakin's mouth, his nose bumping awkwardly against Anakin's own while his hands got tangled in his hair.
He didn't let that deter him though, not when he heard Anakin's gasp, felt the desperate pounding of his heart, and then felt the small, curving smile of those generous lips pressed against his own. He changed the angle and simply brushed his lips against Anakin's again, feeling those lips part under his own, the sigh that seemed to come from Anakin's entire body, the quick breaths he took as though he might pass out at any moment.
And then Obi-Wan kissed him deeply, fiercely. Mine, he said silently, hoping he hadn't projected that thought across their bond even as he kissed Anakin the way he'd seen people kiss in those terrible holodramas his Padawan swore he never watched.
Anakin moaned, quiet and breathy. "Yes," he panted against Obi-Wan's lips. "Yours." Then he was pushing Obi-Wan back, down into those long, soft grasses, covering his body with his own, long, lean one and kissing Obi-Wan until his vision began to grow black from lack of oxygen.
Obi-Wan pushed him back for a second, to catch his breath but mostly so he could see Anakin's face; flushed cheeks and bright eyes, the way he bit his lip as he stared down at Obi-Wan and his gaze filled with lust. "Obi-Wan?" The uncertainty in that voice tore at Obi-Wan's heart, but there would be time to mend that. They had all the time they needed now.
He hooked a leg around Anakin's hip and drew him close again. "Mine," he whispered happily against those lips, a promise and a prayer of thanks all in one. "Mine at last."
And Anakin sighed in relief before bending to kiss him once more.
There wasn't a lot of talking after that, unless you count whispered pleas and endearments, breathy moans, and Anakin's blissful cry of ecstasy – he was noisy in everything he did – and the only sound was the wind until – for a brief moment – the Force turned supernova, light bursting out in all directions in joyful celebration, as her two favored children found each other at last.
The Beginning
&...&...&...&...&
End Notes: Ugh, it was harder than I thought, trying to merge Vader back into Anakin so quickly. I added as much fluff as I could, but redemption is a serious matter! Lol. Hope you all enjoyed it anyway, and hopefully there's a feeling of catharsis, if not fluff. Let me know if Anakin's revelations at the end are unclear. I tried to organize them enough that Anakin's disjointed rationalizations still make sense, but I've stared at it so long it all looks like Greek to me. Be gentle with me, kind readers.
Oh yes, and Obi-Wan's ghost is corporeal, kind of, because Yoda in 'The Last Jedi' smacked Luke on the nose with his cane. Which I thought was hilarious and so I figured Force ghosts are slightly corporeal.
I can't believe I've finally finished this story. It has been so wonderful figuring out all these moments Obi-Wan and Anakin almost kiss, even though I'm sure it drove many of you mad, lol. Thank you so much to everyone who read all the way through, and especially to those who commented and let me know their reactions. I appreciate every single one of you and loved that this story had an impact on so many of you.
And to those of you who commented on every single chapter, you are the reason I added 4 more chapters onto the end of my original 21. The AU and canon compliant happy endings are all for you.
Stay tuned for my next Obi-Wan and Anakin story, tentatively titled "The Far Dark Shore." Coming to a fanfiction site near you in November 2018. My NaNoWriMo project for this year.
Summary: It's been seven years since Vader last encountered the scent of Obi-Wan's infernal spiced tea, yet he would know it anywhere. But what was his old Master's favorite brand of tea doing on a ship that belonged to Bail Organa? Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith and private investigator, intends to find out. Features Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, R2-D2, Bail Organa, Leia Organa, Cad Bane, Aurra Sing, Hera Syndulla and Ahsoka Tano. Eventual Suitless Vader; AU; tiny princess Leia being a badass; some humor; mostly drama and everyone behing a badass; Vader's obsessive tendencies with regards to Obi-Wan; and Vader and Obi-Wan working together.