I know things are going slowly right now, it's intentional. I promise the whole thing won't be this slow paced. I hope you all are enjoying it, though! I am really enjoying writing it.
Obi Wan had to admit, now he knew the reason Zeno was here his companionship felt stifling. Every time the yellow dragon looked his way he wondered whether he was being sized up, evaluated. At least that was one thing he had on Tatooine. No one noticed or cared what he did or how he lived. No one watched him.
No one made food for him either. Even though it was technically for the both of them, Obi Wan couldn't help feeling that Zeno was making sure that he ate regularly. Which wasn't a bad thing. It wasn't. He had been known to skip more meals than perhaps he should, and it wasn't like he didn't feel better with a full stomach to run on. It was a wonder, actually, how much difference regular food and rest could make. He had put down the way his body sometimes rebelled against him to aging, but now realized it had probably been more than that.
That didn't change the fact that he didn't need to be pampered and fussed over like a youngling. The truth was that it didn't matter. He could feel terrible, he could feel wonderful, it was all the same to the Force and it was all the same to him as long as he completed what was needed. He was already dead, so he didn't even need to keep surviving. He would be just fine, no matter what.
Obi Wan stood up abruptly as Zeno stirred the grains in their pot. "I'll be down by the river."
Zeno nodded. "Zeno will call when the food is ready."
"Actually I'm fasting." He froze, waiting for Zeno's response.
"Okay, Mister! Zeno will save some for when Mister breaks his fast, then."
"You really DON'T have to." It came out much more forcefully than he had intended.
"Of course." And blast it all, Obi Wan wasn't sure whether Zeno was accepting what he had said or acknowledging that he didn't have to save food, but was going to do it anyway. It was infuriating and ambiguous and so very… so very like Qui Gon. To be sure Qui Gon would forget for days that his teenage charge needed time and opportunity to eat, but once he got it into his stubborn head that Obi Wan had not eaten or slept enough, that he was too frazzled or too behind on his homework, there was no evading him or his imposed "self care" as he called it. Obi Wan would just have to weather it out and wait for another depressive episode to strike so that he could have some peace again.
"I'm going down to the river," he repeated. "Please, just let me be," he added in a mumble that was louder than he intended. He turned from the camp, cheeks hot, and strode away.
It was cold. He hadn't remembered to grab one of Zeno's cloaks. His own had been left behind on the death star. It didn't matter. It felt right, somehow. It was at least as cold as the desert night on Tatooine. The hunger was a familiar presence gnawing in his gut.
The river swirled and gullied past his feet in a rippling of midnight silk. He stood, watching it's twining, peering into the shadows where the loud night birds hid, getting lost in the clouds of stars above him. But he did not, would not, settle down. After a while the sleep abandoned his eyes, and the hunger curled into a frustrated heap instead of howling inside him. The cold became part of him.
The night sharpened as the moon cut above the trees. The deeper shadows sent prickles along his spine. Treacherous, but familiar.
He hadn't meant to snap at Zeno like that. He was being ridiculous. Perhaps this was too presumptuous of a thing to ask. The doubts swirled around and around, sending echoes out into the very Force itself until he could no longer have peace in meditation in the muddied waters he had made. Then he simply stood.
The night grew old like a fading cloth, greying into predawn. This wasn't Tatooine or Melida Daan, and he had to stop acting like such a crazy hermit. Crazy old Ben had no place here, nor defender Kenobi, the Jedi Padawan who had left. He wasn't sure if any version of him really belonged here or in the afterlife. At least the lonely night didn't protest his presence.
Zeno had said he was good at waiting. The truth was so much more cowardly. He had never, never been good at waiting. He had simply gotten used to being alone.
Running away had always worked before. Maybe this whole situation was more than he could handle. Maybe he should leave for good and find some place for reflection and healing and whatever else he needed to finally die. It would be easy enough to slip off right now. He had never told Zeno when he would be back, and the man hadn't come looking for him.
Was that really what he wanted?
No! That wasn't true. He had a place. Somewhere where he couldn't be replaced, no matter how many times he had been threatened with it. No matter how many times he was told that he would be sent away. A good tool. A servant of the Force.
And the Force had brought him here. He would stay. He reached reflexively for the strand that had once hung proudly next to his ear, and paused when his fingers brushed more than thin air.
The first ray of sun shot over the trees, and the water shone like molten metal. His reddish hair blazed just as brightly from his reflection. His fingers explored the braid hanging next to his face, brushing heavy beads and knots. Real. Very real. His bewildered eyes peered out at him from a much younger face.
A thousand memories tackled him all at once, knocking the wind out of him. His shoulders slumped and he let out a defeated, hollow laugh.
The first rays of sun were quickly obscured by billowing clouds.
If only he could actually be young again, inside and out. If only his mind and soul and experiences could be fresh again and clean.
As if in answer to his silent plea, a drop tapped the tip of his nose. Tiny ripples spread in the river like so many fish coming up to feed. All around, leaves crackled with the wet impact. He was soaked through in seconds. The water was warm and soft. He filled his lungs greedily with the scent of gardens, home, life itself, while the rain pulsed and resonated with the same rhythm as his quickening heartbeat. He gasped and opened his mouth wide to the sky, letting himself imagine the rain could tumble straight down into his heart, cleaning him inside as well as out.
Well, clean was relative when you were sitting in a quickly forming pool of mud. He dug his hands into the sticky clay of the riverbanks, pulling himself to his feet. Mud. He thought he had never heard a word that sounded so sweet. Mud sliding underneath his boots as he tore off at a run, waterlogged robes heavy and clinging.
He was greeted at camp by a muddy sheet of water, splashing everything below his eyebrows. He blinked through it happily. Zeno sprung from that puddle straight to the next with a cat's agility.
"It's raining!" Obi Wan shouted unnecessarily, illustrating by shaking a cascade of drops down from a branch. He could hardly shout louder than the thunderous cacophony. The downpour was now so heavy that it was hard to see more than a few feet ahead through the white sheets. They raced together through it anyway, reaching the river faster than it could rise to meet them, splashing each other all along the way.
Obi Wan caught a glimpse of himself in the water, his silly mudstrewn face and his hair streaming water droplets, grinning from ear to ear. What a fool he was, an absolute childish fool, for moping over a mood that had changed with the weather. A laugh rose out of him, light and giddy. "Baka!" he yelled at his reflection. "Ao!" He was cut off the next second by a flying tackle from Zeno, which left them doubly drenched in the shallows, roaring with laughter.
It was a lot of work scrubbing all the caked mud from their clothes. Their river wasn't really a river, Obi Wan reflected. A small stream, and yet larger than life after the desert.
Laundry hung on sunny branches, blankets wrapped and tea in hand, Obi Wan's hand once again brushed his trailing braid out of his face and froze.
"Say, Zeno, where's your knife?"
Zeno brought out the small blade. It was wickedly sharp for something that had probably been in the wilderness for months.
Obi wan sliced the braid with a single savage sweep. The jagged top unraveled in frizzy wisps, no longer bound. It felt wonderful. Vengeful. Full of spiteful pleasure, if only directed toward himself. The severed braid lay tightly clutched in his hand. Every part of him screamed for him to drop it in the mud, forgotten.
"Those beads sure are pretty! Do they mean anything?"
Obi Wan nodded, swallowing hard. He tapped each in turn with a shaking finger. "Courage, humility, perseverance," he paused before the last one, a dull purple. "Loyalty."
He flung the braid away from him like it was a snake. "Will you go throw this in the river for me?"
"Why?"
"It's for children," he dismissed.
"You look like a child to me. You were just jumping around in the rain like you were about..."
"I know. Please just get rid of it. Before I get it dirty playing in the mud again," he tried to brush it off with a joke.
Zeno shrugged and complied.
It was still hard for Obi Wan to force down bites. It felt like oppressively too much to finish a full meal again, even more so after fasting.
Unusually quiet, Zeno hopped up all at once, with a bright grin. "Just one moment, Mister." And he raced into the night, taking his bowl with him, leaving a bewildered Obi Wan in his wake.
When he returned to the dancing little circle of firelight, he quickly grabbed the bag of leftover grains they had and ground them down to a powder with quick, efficient strokes, added a dash of something from a small pouch, and a splash of something from a bottle. He pressed the creation flat with his hand, tossing it on the pan and held it over the fire. Then he dumped out his bowl into it. A few handfuls of blackberries tumbled into the makeshift crust.
A minute off the pan the little pie was thrust into Obi Wan's hands, the heat stinging just a little through his calluses.
His eyes rose with all the weight of guilt heavy on them to meet Zeno's.
"You don't have to eat it, it was just an idea Zeno had."
A little gust of relief wafted through him. He didn't have to, but Zeno had gone to all the trouble...and in far more than food.
He broke the pie in half, and forced down one part in a few hurried bites.
He hated how his heart leapt at the happiness and approval that shone in Zeno's eyes. He hated the little thrill of pride that ran through himself at causing that. He wasn't some youngling, needing the approval of a creche master. He had done anything to merit it, just eat a few bites. To get the same look out of Qui Gon would have taken something superhuman.
He shoved himself roughly to the present, 'to the here and now,' as a voice in his head supplied, and handed the other half back to Zeno. Zeno savored his slice much more slowly.
His hand felt a little slick where it had brushed Zeno's. He reached out to the firelight to see what it was. A streak of red was spattered across his fingertips...
He grabbed Zeno's wrist. It wasn't as much of a mess as he had seemed remarkably few scratches for the amount of blood that was streaking it. Still, Obi Wan could see places where thorns and brambles were still caught in the skin, oozing.
"Why didn't you use a cloak or something to protect yourself instead of just shoving your hand into a thorn bush?" Obi Wan said in his most exasperated parent voice. Zeno gave no answer, not that Obi Wan had expected one. It had always been the same way when his padawan was younger. He sighed and reached for their sharp little knife without thinking, carefully coaxing out the thorns and brambles with a near surgical precision.
It wasn't until he finished that he saw how rigid Zeno had become. He met Zeno's wide eyed stare and nearly burst out laughing. "Save that for the antiseptic, because it's going to sting like Sithfire." He unscrewed the lid and winced a little as the harsh fermented scent reproved him for all the years he had abandoned it. Oh well, this stuff would have been ugly anyway. He had always been a whiskey man himself.
The scrapes weren't bad, in fact he couldn't spot where they had been in the unsteady firelight without the thorns still embedded. No bandages, then, just healing night air.
He straightened up, satisfied, and the shine of the blade caught his eye. Zeno had absentmindedly washed it with one hand while the other was being attended to.
"May I?" Zeno gestured with the little knife to the jagged patch where his braid had been chopped.
Obi Wan paused. "It wouldn't be proper. Only someone's teacher is supposed to cut their braid."
"Mister cut it off himself earlier."
"I know… I shouldn't have. I just… needed it off. I don't deserve to cut it, but I don't deserve to wear it either. It had to be done..."
"Zeno can't say because he's not you. But," Zeno tapped his own medallion, "the only reason Zeno still has this is because it is very good at finding its way home." He unbound his headscarf, letting the necklace slide to the ground. "Zeno cannot give Mister his braid or his beads back," he continued, gently unknotting the chord, "but if a teacher can cut your braid and a teacher can give you beads, then cannot a guide also?"
"Only for major accomplishments, for reminders…"
Zeno held out one of the blue beads that framed the necklace.
"But I haven't done anything… this is ridiculous, you don't understand."
"It is a reminder. Zeno's master gave this seal to him long ago. A reminder that he will always be with Zeno. And now, this bead will be a reminder to Mister that he is never alone."
All the air left Obi Wan's lungs.
"Don't be so stubborn! You don't have to wear it, just keep it."
Obi Wan took the bead with shaking fingers, tracing along it's smooth, glassy surface, so unlike the clay heaviness of his training beads.
"Thank you," he forced out.
"Of course!" Zeno's smile took up a lot of his face when he got like this. "Now let Zeno fix your hair."
Obi Wan nodded silently. And really, it was alright, wasn't it? Zeno wasn't his master, but if Obi Wan wanted to get out of here, he would have to dedicate himself to the man's teachings, however unorthodox they may seem.
He already found himself following them too, practicing odd meditations where he listened to the voice in his head and spoke back to it in the same gentle reasoning tone he would have used with his padawan or with Ahsoka. He followed along with the signals his body was telling him, whether that meant eating in the middle of the night, or staying up when he was tired, keeping himself distracted from the dark thoughts that crowded his mind. He hadn't gone so far as to forgive himself for that crying spell a few days after they had met, but Zeno had told him not to worry about it, and Obi Wan had not apologized for it again, however wrong that felt.
Ouryuu hadn't gotten fed up with him yet, however many mistakes he made, however awkwardly he followed, and now, even when he refused to comply at all. Somehow, miraculously, Zeno was still here.
Ouryuu's patience was bewildering, to say the least, especially when Obi Wan had made so little progress in return, but Obi Wan admired it and tried to emulate it as best he could.
Zeno wasn't his master, but his teacher? Absolutely. His ally? Completely. His confidant? Probably, before this mess was cleared up and Obi Wan was able to pass on. More than that, Obi Wan realized he would miss the dragon. As the Ouryuu Zeno chattered and trimmed the ends of his hair into neatness like a fussing grandmother, Obi Wan clutched at the little glass bead in his hand. He was dead. He had thought all his goodbyes were over with.
If Zeno thought he could get through this encounter without dealing with some of his issues, he was sorely mistaken. Good luck dealing with Obi Wan, king of making this about you.