A little change of pace here. Not sure if it was the pain meds or my fickle muse, but this chapter centers on the maelstrom of emotions in a certain ginger Jedi. I hear QueenYoda shrieking with glee now...

By the way, this chapter gave me absolute fits, so I'm really interested in how it's received. I'm out of Obi-Wan bobbleheads, but please let me know what you think anyway!

Chapter 28

Once, barely a teenager and shell-shocked from his first bloodshed on the battlefield, Obi-Wan asked his master if the Temple was actually as secure as it seemed.

He'd come to learn that the peaceable Jedi were not without enemies, though he had yet to encounter a Sith.

Qui-Gon, as unconventional as his charge was practical, had grinned with characteristic mystery. "Why do you ask, padawan?"

All the while coaxing sepia stains from the crevices of his lightsaber as Obi-Wan had bemoaned the newly-earned gouges in his.

Obi-Wan had inclined his head in respect, even though Qui-Gon often scoffed at such deference. "Pardon my inquisitiveness, Master, but we did just cultivate a mountain of ill will with the majority of citizens in Bandomeer."

Qui-Gon had then abandoned his post-combat rituals of scrubbing his scarred weapon and further scarred boots to brew a pot of pungent sapir tea they'd sipped in the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

A half-hour after the asking, a story had unfolded like the most unsettling of nightmares. Many standard years before Obi-Wan's birth, the Temple had come under attack by Sith invaders, the details of which Qui-Gon recounted rather exhaustively until the boy from Stewjon wasn't sure if he felt better or worse.

Then, eyes twinkling with a verve Obi-Wan would later detect in a wide-eyed padawan with whom he would, much in the same manner, share bunks, battles and fragrant teas, Qui-Gon had placed his cup on the edge of the bench and uncurled his fingers from the stem. His voice was sage, steadfast.

"Like the Jedi, the Temple will always rise, my padawan. No matter the circumstance."

It wasn't exactly a "happily ever after," but it would do.

Today, Obi-Wan tucks his idealistic master's belief in a corner of his heart, which seems to be shriveling in latent sorrow. Remembrances have begun to assail with the frenzy of a beehive enthusiastically provoked by a hundred sharp sticks.

"A couple of Imps at the front entrance, and not even a full regiment patrolling the spires," Anakin reports, a tinge of disgust in his voice. He is focused, almost eerily so; a staunch counterpoint to the moody jags of Obi-Wan's Force-signature.

Relax and concentrate. How many times had Obi-Wan sent Anakin off to Force-knew what calamity with those very words?

The master needs them now, despite the slew of deep, ruminative breaths he keeps ordering himself to take as they survey activity on the outskirts of their former home, the smog and darkness of Coruscant clinging heavily to their clothing.

"There are more within," Obi-Wan replies in monotone, a stark difference from his normal mission-voice that usually brims with work-to-do efficiency. Anakin's brow arches at the quiet detachment that seems akin to a shower of icy water pelting his face.

Obi-Wan hears his own voice, winces. Relax and concentrate. Focus on the here and now, not –

A swirl of vivid orange skitters before him, a flash of fluorescence in the darkness. An unbound leaf from a Gorsa tree, perhaps? Something forgotten escapes a dormant cranny of his brain, whispers of harvest sunshine and a wide-eyed boy…

The autumn afternoon seemed too holo-perfect to be designed by random nature. As he'd trailed behind his master, bloated from a sumptuous meal at that rundown diner Qui-Gon favors, Obi-Wan had wondered if the ever-present Coruscanti WeatherNet had conjured the pleasant crispness in the air, as well.

Half-bored, but wholly-eager to impress his new master, Obi-Wan took the steps two at a time while summoning the Force. He froze a windblown Gorsa leaf in mid-air with little effort, suspending it long enough to admire the glint of rare tangerine in the smog near the Temple's public entrance, before another blink of russet interrupted his play.

The boy was no older than nine to Obi-Wan's thirteen. He stood just outside the curved archways, eyes round and index finger pointed toward the towering splendor of the spires, expression one of childish awe.

Obi-Wan recalled nodding to the copper-haired boy and his female companion, a passing politeness, before toying with the leaf.

He wasn't sure what instinct adhered his boots to the ground as if affixed by a strong compound, but his about-face occurred as a single word commanded his thoughts.

Owen.

The name wasn't just in his mind anymore. Obi-Wan had spoken it aloud, freed it from the confines of his mind with a jaunty exhilaration that had Qui-Gon retreating to join the group.

"Is that your name?" the gangly boy Qui-Gon often had to encourage to socialize pursued of the two strangers, slowed by their surprise but undaunted nonetheless. "Are you Owen?"

Green eyes, Obi-Wan thought with confused annoyance as the woman – the boy's mother, perhaps? His mother? – stared blankly back at him. But something was amiss. Her eyes should reflect the color of spring grasses, not muddy pools.

Maybe I just don't remember correctly, he'd rationalized.

Qui-Gon's palm was on the woman's shoulder before she could reply, his tone silky as he bestowed his most gracious smile upon her, then transferred it smoothly to the boy.

"My apologies, dear lady. My padawan has mistaken you for someone else."

Mistaken. Of course he was. Why would they be here? He doubted they wondered about him as much as he pondered them.

Jedi decorum returned in a flurry to Obi-Wan's jumbled mind. Immediately contrite, he bowed deeply to the pair, hands falling to his sides. When his head elevated, he noted that the boy's hand had crept into the woman's, but his emerald eyes had lost some of their trepidation.

"I am very sorry." Obi-Wan addressed the boy who was not Owen. "I hoped you were someone else."

Thought. That's what Obi-Wan should have said. Why was he so flustered that he could not remember the propriety so painstakingly instilled in him?

The duo that was not a snippet of Obi-Wan's family eventually departed, and the padawan stubbornly willed his vision to one of the majestic spires so it would not follow their path.

Qui-Gon's palm was on his shoulder then, quiet comfort. "That was not your brother, young one."

What did he mean by that? Obi-Wan thundered inwardly, struggling to regain his center within the Force. Yes, the Jedi were his brethren, but did labeling those who came before as "attachments" annihilate filaments of flesh and blood?

Suddenly, the obedience drilled into Obi-Wan from his early days at the Temple mutated into something snappish. Before he could think – and, therefore, resist – he had pulled roughly from his master, robes fluttering as he raised rebellious eyes for the first time since becoming a padawan.

"How would you know?" Obi-Wan's mouth had twisted as if repelling a tang of bitterness on his tongue. "You have never seen my brother."

The phantom taste of acrimony had spread to his eyes; they glittered with tears hovering in the wind of a perfect autumn day.

Before he stalked angrily past the Temple's befuddled gatekeeper, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi padawan and nothing more, gritted acidly, "Since I cannot remember what he looks like, how would either of us know, anyway?"

Later, he eschewed evening tea for what he hoped to be contemplative meditation in his humble quarters. He had already prepared a profuse apology he would deliver during the next morning's meal.

Folding a lanky calf under each knee, he made breathing his focus, the elemental hum of in and out, from mouth to sternum to stomach, until an unconscious rhythm had developed and the coppery hue had slipped from his memories.

I am a Jedi, nothing more.

I am not a brother.

I am not a son.

I am a Jedi.

The mantra, clean as the Ataru fighting style of which he'd quickly grown proficient, should have eased his fitful soul.

It did not.

"Master?"

Muddled in his recollections, Obi-Wan does not answer. He wishes his senses were as blindly scattered as his thoughts. Perhaps then, the ghastly stench of the dead would not overpower the essence of the living in this place that was once infinitely sacred.

Still sacred, the master thinks as Anakin nudges the tip of his boot into Obi-Wan's ankle.

Infiltration strategy? the younger man questions through their Force-bond. Several options have been discussed, but since they hadn't been able to ascertain the intensity of security, nor the level of countermeasures in place, their strategy had been to fly by the seat of their pants – not remotely the first time – on site.

Anakin fits a pair of macrobinoculars to his eyes, revises his viewpoint a few times before proposing, "If we can make entry through the roof of the fountain room, perhaps the sky canvas will still be in place. Our movements into the tunnels would be concealed."

"If the canvas is still in place," Obi-Wan murmurs, not entirely present. A moment later, he turns sharply in Anakin's direction, a snap as crisp as the artificial season in his tone. "Is the canvas still in place? You would be the one to ask."

Anakin visibly flinches, macrobinoculars falling to his side.

Obi-Wan offers neither apology nor response, but the Force pulsates with energies Anakin has never associated with the placid, utterly rational Jedi master who stares into the decrepit ruins of his former home with unblinking nothingness.

He is tempest, a firestorm of rapid-fire emotions gathering like the protean winds that incite a raging hurricane.

He is loss, a mystified four-year-old yearning desperately for the warmth of his mother amid a sea of murky cloaks.

He is…

Cold.

Anakin fumbles at his utility belt, a rustle of trembling fingers that rearrange his comm link, find his holomap in the pouch where he'd placed it this morning, double-check for his lightsaber, although it would be nowhere else. Then, they surrender into a frustrated clench.

His master draws a steadying breath, lids closing to the breeze that has chilled as it accepts his exhale.

"I am not angry with you, Anakin." Calm. Cool, but not gelid.

He has forgiven Anakin. He has. He has.

But pardon is not absolution, and it is impossible to ignore that a blackened pyre sits as a brazen precedent near the public entrance. That it remains hidden by the darkness does not erase the remains of their kind that rest in a mass of throwaway cinders. Desecrated by the elements as wanton, public punishment.

Each speck of their decayed robes – for Obi-Wan firmly believes the merciful Force claimed their flesh – vilifies them as betrayers.

If Sidious had not ordered him to Mustafar, would Lord Vader have released the fire that consumed their bodies? Not as one honorable Jedi to another, but as a representation of all the Order fought to eliminate?

It is a contemptible reminder that the last time the once-insoluble team of Skywalker and Kenobi made separate footfall on Temple grounds, one marched away a conqueror, while the other wore the boots of an outlaw.

"But you are angry." The subtle twitch of Obi-Wan's mouth has always been his tell, and Anakin learned early in their relationship to scrutinize its degrees. Whereas many unveiled their displeasures with loud words and gestures, Anakin equates his master's anger with stillness of the most unsettling kind.

"I am… many things," Obi-Wan confesses, eyes wandering back to the Temple as he adjusts his cloak.

As much as he's longed to return, there is a pronounced unease at the thought of walking in the footprints of the dead.

"Mostly, I am anxious to quiet the insistence of the Force. Perhaps the nexus has drawn us here."

Or perhaps we've discarded our sanity in heeding its call this time, Anakin muses, feeling more discomfit with the passage of each moment. The warring factions of his soul had come to a detente of sorts before they'd landed on Coruscant. Now, approaching the site where the polar extremes of his choices intermingled, the Dark Side has come dangerously alive.

The spoils of victory lie before you. Those who thought themselves your equal are no more. With the Dark Side, you are their master.

With the Dark Side, you are invincible.

Obi-Wan does not hear the lure of the darkness this time, but a wind stiffer than the breezes that fluttered the Gorsa leaf before him howls with sudden ferocity.

Here, in the birthplace of their bond, each feels supremely vulnerable as past and present collude in a vortex of uncertainty. Qui-Gon's death had created an unexpected partnership that developed with time and great patience, but its strength now feels precariously brittle.

When had they first learned to trust?

He was sweaty, ill-tempered and… quiet.

Too quiet. By the flickering light in Obi-Wan's sparsely-furnished quarters, Anakin tended to a slash on his right shoulder, resentment flaring from him in jagged waves. Obi-Wan had expected his initiate to be spitting mad and eager to unleash it. Saber injuries, even from training devices, were touchy.

So was Anakin. With a hint of prideful and a healthy dose of stubborn. Held a grudge, too.

But when Obi-Wan tapped into Anakin's underlying emotions, his coarse shell was stripped away, leaving just one uncertainty laid bare: fear.

Without asking, Obi-Wan applied a wet cloth to the shoulder, and Anakin didn't so much as blink. The master knew it hurt, had endured his share of training wounds to understand the protracted sting, but Anakin conceded no discomfort.

Blast that boy, but he is too obstinate for his own good, Obi-Wan thought as he adhered a bacta patch to Anakin's skin, still bronzed as if soaked in the rays of dual suns, rather than the sterile training quarters he's scarcely left during the past year.

Fortunately, the scamp was also wildly talented. Exuding a natural affinity for swordsmanship, Anakin had adapted to lightsaber training as easily as he'd repaired nearly every faulty appliance in Obi-Wan's wing of the Temple. The only reason Obi-Wan had been training with him was a sheer lack of initiates Anakin's age able to hold their own.

The wound had been a silly fluke, really. Anakin's saber must have been flawed; it nearly bent in half, disrupting his balance and timing, as he'd attempted an aggressive move. The motion of Obi-Wan's defensive strike had been unstoppable, and Anakin defenseless.

"Just tell me what I did so I don't do it again."

The boy's eyes were downcast and hidden under bangs that just reached his brows, voice that of a sullen ten-year-old. He rolled his shoulder a few times, as if to pointedly remind Obi-Wan that the injury would heal, thank you very much, and it didn't even hurt, anyway.

The master was taken aback, returning the first aid supplies to a rucksack. "You didn't do anything, padawan."

Anakin's head had snatched upward, eyes blazing with veiled impudence and… something elusive. "I don't want you to keep doctoring up these things." He pointed impatiently toward his marred shoulder with the index finger on his unaffected hand. "I can't correct what I did to anger you if you don't tell me what it was." As if on instinct, his sandy head had bowed until he was all curls, and that blue-eyed gaze transferred to Obi-Wan's boots. "Please, Master."

Telltale signals had converged in a stark realization, and Obi-Wan had never been so thunderstruck in his twenty-six years.

He thinks I punished him.

He is afraid of me.

Obi-Wan reaches a hand under his young padawan's chin, which quakes a bit at the touch, and crouches slightly. Anakin is small of stature, but if his feet are any indication, his height will surpass Obi-Wan's in a few years.

For this, the master needs their fields of vision on a level plane.

"Anakin, please listen for a moment, and hear me well. Your injury was an unfortunate mishap during training. Jedi do not – I do not – harm people purposefully, even if they do things I do not like."

You are safe here, he assured, psychological nourishment through their still-infantile bond. I will not hurt you.

Anakin had outright scoffed at the sentiment. Uneven knots of scar tissue riddling his skin were proof that those with dominion over him could inflict punishment by their whims. Though these Jedi spoke more softly and without the menace to which he'd grown accustomed, Tatooine teemed with slavers boasting tongues of satin, but fists of stone.

I'm not sure if I believe you, the boy had admitted with a certain amount of hesitancy, gambling that the noble Jedi, unlike those on his home planet, would reply to unwanted truths without reactive backhands.

His master's expression had altered not one blink.

Take a chance and someday you will, padawan.

The shared memory lingers in their Force-bond for long moments. For once, Obi-Wan has no wisdom to pass as they secure their equipment and decide on an infiltration strategy. Silence growing louder by each second, Obi-Wan settles on words from the past.

"The Jedi will always rise, Anakin, no matter the circumstance. And you will rise with us."

Their right hands - one gloved durasteel and the other human, but still the hands of brothers - grasp and hold with utmost conviction as the Temple waits. Barren. Defaced. Bereft.

But standing, still.

"We will make it so. Together."

Finis. For now.

Oh, they're not done. Neither are the memories. And our intrepid ginger Jedi? Well, he'll have a strong reaction to the next round of "I remember when…"

As always, your feedback makes my imagination tick. Thank you kindly to the following who continue to favorite, follow and comment, especially: FireShifter, Mireilles3, TeresaLynne, the-writer1988, Dark Mistress of the Sith, Raiukage, QueenNaberrie, Eldar-Melda, Jedi Master Misty Sman-Esay, QueenYoda, angie, ILDV, Robert Escher, Guest 1 and Guest 2 and Revan0080. You are all the crystal in my lightsaber.