A few days later, Obi-Wan Kenobi, former Jedi Master and current hermit found his former friend and student Anakin Skywalker labouring in the little garage off to the side of the main hut. For a year or so, Obi-Wan had purely used it as a small storage facility, most of the interior taken up by the unsalvageable half of a speeder he'd been gifted by a friendly group of Jawas. He'd only kept it around on the off-chance that he might be able to remove some useful trinkets from it someday, but with Obi-Wan being about as inept as a lizard-monkey when it came to anything more technologically advanced than a lightsaber, he finally gave up and left it to rot in storage.

Until Anakin decided that having only a single arm didn't offer enough mobility for him.

He'd always been the tech-savvy of the two. It shouldn't have taken Obi-Wan by surprise to see him so quick to dismantle the speeder, removing whatever he needed, scavenging boxes of spare parts to find whatever cogs and wires he required at the moment, but it still did. There was something charming in watching Anakin where he sat, exposed back pressed against a sandy wall, tinkering with the connections and the mysterious inner workings of his right leg.

The man who was no longer a boy removed a tool whose purpose Obi-Wan didn't know from the metal leg, lifting the prosthetic into the air and moving it back and forth, testing every angle to make sure it worked. Compared to the previous limbs Anakin must have had, this one moved with clunky, choppy gestures, some interior system constantly lugging and whining.

Obi-Wan watched him silently from the doorway. Anakin's body was all changed, his limbs were all gone, but in the swift, deliberate movements of his moving meditation, it was clearly still him. Still that very same boy he'd met on this very same planet 17 years ago. It felt like so much longer than that. It felt like yesterday.

Anakin glanced up to meet his glance, his dim eyes brightening a shade. It felt like this very moment.

Anakin didn't smile. In his presence in the Force, formerly so icy and cold it felt like the dead of space, a black hole that sucked in everything around it, that very presence had changed to a lukewarm glow, tinged with the scent of Tatooine cactiblooms. Upon seeing his former master, his presence rippled and rose in silent greeting.

"Will you finally be able to walk on your own, or must I assist you once more, old friend?" Obi-Wan asked, letting an aged smile wash over his face.

Anakin's dim-blue eyes turned to look at his legs. His eyes had been much brighter as a child. Though, even then, his harrowing life as a slave had worked to diminish some of his natural glow. Living in the Jedi temple with people who accepted him as family, his bright eyes slowly grew to shine like stars. But every mission, every experience outside the temple somehow worked to dampen that light. By the start of the Clone Wars, he was no longer a boy but a man.

With the Clone Wars, Anakin's eyes had turned to ice within as little as a month. There was no room for relaxation. No time to return to the temple to rest and meditate. If they finished a mission in the core, then they were needed in the outer rim. And there they would remain for months on end. The light in Anakin's eyes was hidden behind a deep wall of ice, as though peering up at the moon from beneath the glacier-covered oceans. Almost hidden.

Not gone.

Never gone, not even now.

Shakingly, Anakin made to stand. His mechanical legs trembled and whined underneath his organic weight, and the man himself had to grit his teeth and claw his equally mechanical arms into the nearby wall to remain standing. Eventually, he came to stand upright. His legs were barely as thin as a pair of exhaust pipes, but even then they worked. Anakin still had it in him.

He gave a defiant smirk, even though his whole body was trembling, face turning red with effort.

Obi-Wan merely shrugged. "Fine, fine. You've proven your point."

Happy with the response, Anakin collapsed back onto the floor, a small cloud of dust rising as he exhaled a hissing breath. Then, he promptly began to have a coughing fit, clearly having forgotten that he no longer had a ventilation unit to scrub his air any longer. He buckled over, wheezes clawing through his throat, face growing so red that Obi-Wan briefly wondered if he should help. Then, as fast as it had started, it tapered out, ending with Anakin taking a deep, steadying breath.

Metal hand cradling his throat, Anakin carefully regarded his master.

With their eyes meeting, Obi-Wan briefly wondered if - had he removed the mask earlier - Anakin's eyes might still have been that predatory yellow he'd seen last they saw each other. Before this happened.

Obi-Wan Kenobi would be a liar if he said he had expected this to happen. All of this.

There's still good in him, Padmé had told him. It felt like an eternity ago.

Even though it had been on her deathbed, even though the Force brimmed with truth about her, Obi-Wan hadn't trusted her. Not really. It was hard to do so with the things Vader-, no, Anakin had done. All of it. So many atrocities committed in the name of a movement he had now all but renounced.

Obi-Wan had almost been happy to find him half-dead. Mere days from the grave. It meant he wouldn't have to do the dirty deed of killing him himself.

If he hadn't crashed, if he'd still been in good condition, Obi-Wan liked to think he would have tried to fight him. He had to. To protect Luke.

At the same time, had Anakin not attacked, if he hadn't tried to kill him… Would Obi-Wan still have done anything? Would he have tried to talk sense into him, would he have been able to lie down and forgive him for what he did? Obi-Wan wasn't sure. He couldn't tell. Those questions were all from a reality separate from his, and trying to peer into it was to go against the will of the Force.

It was regret, and Obi-Wan let go of it.

Instead of mulling over it, he stood in the doorway and watched as Anakin slowly ran his right hand - the only one containing pressure and touch sensors - over his face and head. It was as calloused and scarred as the rest of his body, to such an extent that when Obi-Wan looked at him, the only things that told him it was still Anakin were his thawed blue eyes and that ever-present scar clawing over his right eye. The one that Asaajj Ventress had given him so many years ago.

"Do you think my hair will ever grow out?" Anakin asked feebly. Maybe just to say something, maybe because he really cared.

Obi-Wan shrugged. "It wouldn't be impossible, though I couldn't do it myself." He almost hoped Anakin wouldn't catch the bait, but watching Anakin rub his calloused, smooth scalp was enough to tell him he'd bit, chewed and swallowed.

"I could learn to do it?" It had been long since Obi-Wan had seen it last, but all of a sudden, Anakin's eyes gleamed with that childish curiosity he'd had as a boy. That ever-present need to learn every Jedi power, to become the best Jedi and make his master proud with everything he knew. "Could-, could I really learn to do that?"

Smiling knowingly, Obi-Wan stepped inside the shed fully, walked over to where Anakin sat and kneeled down in front of him so that their eyes were on the same level. There, he took a gentle hold of his mechanical hands, cupping them in his. "I've told you before and I'll tell you again. As long as you believe you can do it, you can do anything."

And while such a sentiment used to mean that Anakin could gain as much power as he desired, acquiring the strength to end the Clone Wars and restore balance to the Force, now, it almost felt mundane. If Anakin only believed he could do it, he could learn how to regrow his hair. He could become Anakin again, he could change for the better. If he believed in himself, so, too, would the Force believe in him.

Doubt and worry mingled in Anakin's icy eyes, a mild torrent snaking beneath the frozen surface. "But-, but what if I can't? I couldn't save the Republic, I couldn't save Padmé-," he choked on her name. His eyes met Obi-Wan's. In those frozen waters, Obi-Wan saw himself mirrored. A hermit, living on the edges of the Dune Sea, in the outer reaches of the galaxy, living off of scraps. "I couldn't save you."

Obi-Wan just smiled, his hands tightening around Anakin's metal hands. "You already have."

Anakin turned away, hands trembling. "How can you say that? How can you pretend that it's fine, after what I did to you? To the Order?"

"I don't have to pretend," Obi-Wan responded quietly.

Pulling his hands away from Obi-Wan's, Anakin shook his head, lips pulled tight into a desperate frown. "Not like that." Then he reached over, and while his left hand clutched Obi-Wan's shoulder, the other pressed against his chest; his heart. "In here. All the way in there. It hurts, Obi-Wan. I can tell it does. Why won't you let yourself feel it? Why do you reject your pain?"

Obi-Wan held his hand against Anakin's, pressing the metal closer to his chest, feeling how his heartbeat pulsed through the durasteel. "If I did, that's all I would ever feel."

Anakin turned away, but his hand was steady. "What do you feel, then? If you can't feel your pain, what's left?"

With his other hand, Obi-Wan reached up and cupped Anakin's head, angling it to face him. To meet his eyes. "Happiness."

Compassion. Compassion and love. That's what brimmed in Obi-Wan's eyes.

Anakin leaned into Kenobi's hand, pressing himself into it as though expecting it to give away under the pressure of his desperation. It didn't. If anything, it held fast. Even when Anakin's tears stained it and trickled down the wrist, it held fast. Just as it always had.

Obi-Wan would always be there for him.

He didn't need to say it. Just the look in his eyes was enough.

Night fell gently on Tatooine. The hut Obi-Wan now shared with his former student was warm, humming gently and melodically with the joy of the Force.

Obi-Wan had slept for about three hours before waking up in a sweat. Breathing quickly, heart pounding, he believed he was back on Mustafar, where the eyes of his brother were as vivid and burning as the magma they fought above. Lightsabers clashed within his heart, but slowly, surely, he came to remember that he wasn't there anymore. He was on Tatooine. Where everything had begun.

And he wasn't alone anymore.

Looking at the doorway to his bedroom, he found that a shadow lingered there. His ocean-blue eyes sparkled in the dim light of the moons. For one panicked moment, Obi-Wan wondered how Vader had gotten his limbs back. If he had come to finally kill him, or to simply taunt him for his weakness, or-,

The shadow moved. His limbs were thin, its wires exposed. Movement was laboured and stilted, as though he was moving through quicksand, and Obi-Wan remembered that the one who moved through his room at this hour was not a dark phantom of his past, but merely someone whose breathing was as quick as his own.

Anakin soon stood above Obi-Wan's bed. There was a half-panicked look in his eye, something wild and untamed.

Only his right arm was fastened, the other arm likely left in the other room. Since Anakin hardly slept in such uncomfortable prosthetics, it had to mean he'd put them on specifically to come here; to stand above Obi-Wan's bed in the middle of the night.

The Force swirled gently around the both of them. "Everything alright, Anakin?"

Slowly, Anakin brought his breathing under control, though his skin was still slick with sweat and trepidation. "I-," the words got caught in his throat and he shook his head. "You were having nightmares, right? I could tell. In-, in the Force."

Obi-Wan sat up in his bed, drawing his knees into his arms. He couldn't look Anakin in the eye. "I don't see how it's important."

Anakin took a step closer to the bed, and Obi-Wan almost drew back. Finding Anakin's eyes, Obi-Wan noticed a small twinge of hurt in them. "I was also… I just…" Fumbling, grasping words fell out of Anakin's mouth. "Would it be alright, if… If I slept in here, with you? I could bring my blanket. Sleep on the floor. Though, I really don't have to, I just thought that,"

"No, no, it's," Obi-Wan began, noticing even in the darkness of the room how Anakin stiffened in preparation for the rejection that was sure to come. Obi-wan sighed deeply. Always with him… "It's fine, Anakin. You don't have to go get your blanket. It'll just make it harder to fall asleep again."

"So, then, I can…"

Obi-Wan nodded deeply, though he couldn't know if Anakin saw it in the darkness. "As long as you take off your limbs first." He couldn't know for sure, but he was pretty certain that the droid-like appendages wouldn't be too pleasant to have in your bed.

The Force surrounding Anakin grew bubbly and bright with elation as the man - his face as blank as a canvas - rigidly moved over to stand on the other side of the bed. While Obi-Wan gently scootched over to make place, Anakin leaned down and detached both of his legs, gingerly placing them on the floor as though they were fine china. In one smooth movement, he hoisted both stumps over the side of the bed, placing them parallel with where Obi-Wan laid.

Using the Force, he finally removed his one arm.

Since his former student could no longer move, Obi-Wan sat up in bed, draped the blanket over Anakin's bare legs, and then again laid down.

For a moment, they just laid there, right next to each other. As their breaths slowly grew in sync, they stared up at the ceiling. Around them, the Force swirled like a warm summer's wind on Naboo, stretching over the blooming hills outside Theed. Years melted away before their eyes, before Mustafar, before the Clone Wars, before everything. They breathed together.

But when they turned to look at each other, they found that the years had left a mark deeper than any wound. Anakin was a burned husk of what he once was, Obi-Wan seemed ten years older than he really was.

They had lost so much.

Turning his head only slightly, Obi-Wan saw how Anakin's eyes glimmered softly in the night, a streak of moonlight running down his cheek. Gently, Obi-Wan wiped it off, Anakin turning to look at him as though only now ripped from some reverie. "I'm-,"

"Don't say anything," Obi-Wan whispered. "You don't have to say anything."

He didn't. The only sound he made was a brief sniffle, but even that was soon overcome with reverent silence.

In the middle of that silence, a hum gently flew from Obi-Wan, a little song he'd learnt from someplace he didn't know. To him, it had always felt incomplete. A lone rose growing atop a cliff face, its snaking, barbed vines keeping it only barely upright in the wind. Alone.

Soon his little song grew muted as forgotten notes replaced known ones. The silence of the moon once again pervaded the room. All that could be heard was soft breathing.

Until, quietly, reluctantly, almost like a whisper, a strumming little melody rose from Anakin. A hum that seemed to match Obi-Wan's own, but different. The song was stronger, more defined, though many empty passages seemed to gape, longing to be filled by a supporting aria.

As Anakin's melody grew to a close, silence once more reigning, it seemed as though their minds had become one.

Together, as though they had been meaning to do so for years, they sang the song.

Anakin hummed the melody, bold and powerful, taking the lead. At the same time, filling in the pauses, supporting the crescendos and suggesting the ritardandos, Obi-Wan followed along. Their hum filled the room, making the Force dance with conjoined joy. A blooming Tatooine cactus and the delicate Coruscant rose. Their fickle scents, alone so unbalanced and bare, together became a perfume. The beauty of the rose supported by the quiet courage of the blooming cactus.

And then, as soon as it had started, it hummed out. The Force was left abuzz, their hearts beating to the same rhythm. It was all good.

They fell asleep in the same bed, their night filled with nothing but soothing dreams. Neither of them had a nightmare, be it of Mustafar or the Clone Wars or anything else. Just the endless embrace of the Force, of all those they had loved and lost, moving through the clear waters like winged goldies. They dreamt together, and in the dream, there were no inhibitions or doubts.

In the dream, they were together. They laughed and they cried and they hugged and talked about everything that had happened, everything they would have to do. What will we do? What can we do? Anakin would ask, pacing as though the concept of physical bodies was still true, and in the world of dreams, he remained whole. We'll do what is right, Obi-Wan would answer, together, we can do it.

We're only two. Pal-, no, Sidious has thousands of troops. People who will do anything he asks, even if it is to die. There's no changing them.

I changed you, didn't I?

And Anakin would stop pacing to regard his master, and in the world of dreams, he didn't hesitate to laugh, because his throat had never been charred black. That's different. This is all different. We need a plan, a force to fear! Jedi… Yes, we need Jedi. As many as there can be.

In dreams, Obi-Wan had no reason to hide his thoughts. There are few left. The Force is muddled with the dark side, impenetrable as black waters. But you can feel the flickers of their life, can't you?

When Anakin himself was the black waters, he could not see the stars. But now that he was one of those distant flickers of light, he saw them clearly. Yoda lives? Although he had never liked him, the mention of the old grandmaster brought hope.

Obi-Wan was less joyful. Barely. He doesn't have long. An invisible shrug. It is not him I have in mind.

Then who?

The dream ended before Obi-Wan could tell more than he would ever have wanted to.