"Stay here while I make a quick call," Obi-wan said in a warm voice intended to soothe his distressed Padawan who sat in a disembodied haze, distant and tattered, fatigue showing through his beautiful pale skin.
Anakin was tired, his poor mind and body running on their last shred of resolve. That had to have been the source of the hallucinations, the exhaustion. This place however steeped in force energy, held elements that were hardly useful or conducive to healing. Zaann being the most instrumentally counterproductive, of course.
Obi-wan felt the semblance of solace fall over his own turbulent rage laced fears as he set himself on a resolved path- a course of action that would take both him and Anakin away from the horrors that seemed to follow them everywhere. He would take his troubled Padawan home, where he could rest and recharge and become the self-assured, relentless, stubborn boy he had taught all these years. Or at least that's what Obi-wan decided to believe.
He would erase the doubt and harm that Zaann had inflicted on him mentally. He would help mend Anakin's fears and wounds from that dreadful Sith planet. Obi-wan wanted to be everything to make him whole again. And maybe, just maybe, he might find himself whole somewhere along the way, too. Because however it might have happened, Obi-wan realized he had lost a piece of himself.
Maybe it had been taken by the Sith, by the cold fingers of the dark being that had crept over his mind and body. Obi-wan shuddered, feeling a sickness root in his stomach as he clenched his hands and opened his palms up to examine. No trace remained of the darkness that had filled him. One would never suspect by looking at him how he had been a vessel to things so dark and unseemly. The things that he had seen and felt in response, had changed his mind and heart in ways he regretted. In ways that he didn't want fixed. It hollowed out a part of his heart that only Anakin could fill.
What scared Obi-wan the most was how he knew it had been inside him all along. The feelings, desires and wants- needs. They had rested dormant beneath his awareness, waiting to be discovered. The manner of how they came to light stirred another rise of anger in his belly, towards the Sith as much as himself.
As much as Obi-wan had tried to forget, he knew he couldn't. That wretched nightmare turned lurid dream. He should have never allowed himself, but it was too late now. The memory of it kept him bated, careful not to get too close.
So simple touches seemed too much. A warm embrace, a chaste kiss, entirely inappropriate. The fact that Anakin needed such things made him afraid. He was afraid of himself, repulsed by his weakness, his lack of restraint. It was one thing to feel, quite another to give in as he had. Perhaps it had been a moment of weakness, an easy justification, a bargain he had made in the moment. But there was no justification at all.
That dark world had taken something pure and wonderful and sullied it. It had twisted his desires selfishly, in ways he couldn't reconcile. And the void remained inside him still. It yearned for a closeness, an intimacy that transcended anything he had ever felt before.
What he would give just to see Anakin smile again, his eyes lit up with true happiness. Obi-wan's heart ached at the prospect. At his core, that was what he longed for above all else. Only a large portion of his heart and desires wished that he could give it all to him. That he could kiss all of his problems away, be the cure he needed. It was selfish, Obi-wan knew.
And perhaps that was it, the truth to the ache in his chest. It was desire in all its forms, along with a hatred towards himself for feeling any of it. He loved Anakin, and it would do nothing but hurt the boy. It would forever remain unfulfilled. If he was going to stay true to his duty, to Anakin, he would need to come to terms with that. Anything else would be impossibly selfish.
He could turn that desire into devotion, erasing every last bit of selfish inclination and exchanging it for duty and honor. He would forgo himself for the sake of Anakin. It was the only thing he could do. So he would.
Forcing himself out of his conflicted deliberation, Obi-wan withdrew his comlink from his tunic, keying on the frequency to reach Master Yoda. Only something seemed to be wrong. The device didn't appear to be making an uplink, let alone show any signal of connectivity at all.
Obi-wan switched the device off and tried again to no avail. As he cased back out to their living quarters, Anakin looked back at him with an attentive expression. No doubt he could already tell something was amiss.
"Is your comlink working?" Obi-wan asked, seeing Anakin draw his communicator out and switch it on.
"Try to reach the temple." Obi-wan suggested. Anakin did as he was told, yielding the same results.
"I'm not getting anything. It doesn't even look like i'm getting a link off-world." Anakin said, shaking his head.
"That's what I was afraid of." Obi-wan said, a sinking feeling in his stomach.
"So what then? Can't we just make contact once we get off world?" Anakin suggested.
"I suppose that's what we'll have to do." Obi-wan said. "If you don't have any other plans for the afternoon, I think we shall be taking our leave then." He added in a refreshing tone, trying to leave the foreboding behind.
Anakin's eyes turned a shade hopeful, something else mixed up within them. "No, no plans." He said, a small smile turning up at the corners of his lips.
It brought a swell of relief to Obi-wan's heart. The next thought in his mind was more of a plea to the force, to let him leave without seeing that dreaded Jedi Master on his way out. Somehow Obi-wan didn't feel too hopeful in the prospect.
Without even bothering to stow the tea set away or pack any of the scant belongings they had brought with them, Obi-wan and Anakin set out to make their leave of the temple. Obi-wan could feel Anakin walk closely to him, something fearful drifting through his aura.
Stepping into the lift that would take them down to the entry hall, Obi-wan looked over at his Padawan, seeing the slightest sheen of sweat glisten on his brow. His pallor suggested the same as he wrung his hands nervously, an old habit. Anakin was dreadfully anxious, borderline fearful.
Reaching past his comfort zone for the sake of his Padawan and without a word, Obi-wan stepped closer and pulled Anakin into his arms. He could feel the rigidity of the boy's shoulders melt as he took a breath, the weight of his head pressing snugly into the crook of his neck. Anakin put his arms around his Master's torso and held him tightly in return.
Obi-wan didn't have any reassuring words to say, although he was sure there must have been something for the circumstance. However he searched, he came up null. It didn't seem to matter. He could feel Anakin's tension melt away, his body becoming warm, pressing against him, totally surrendered- willingly vulnerable. Obi-wan's heart fluttered.
A siren went off in his mind, a warning. He had crossed the line, gotten too close. Obi-wan pulled back gently from the embrace. Unable to remove himself entirely, their bodies lingered only inches apart, something magnetic pulling them near to one another. Obi-wan made the mistake of looking up into Anakin's eyes, seeing what seemed on first glance, a shy reflection of what he felt in his own heart.
Or, was it something much simpler? Twisted to seem like something else borne from his own selfish desires? That made the most sense, Obi-wan decided. Or it had been the most comfortable thing to choose to believe. Clinging to the cool logic of it made him feel better, even if just barely.
"It's all going to be alright." Obi-wan said, taking too long between making eye contact and finding words.
He could feel how Anakin latched onto those words like a promise, their meaning well exceeding their however ambiguous, finite definition. He could see it in the way Anakin's eyes looked deeper into his own. It meant so much more to him. It almost seemed like Anakin wanted what he wanted, for his Master to fix him, to make him whole again. To piece back the shattered puzzle of his soul, to erase all the tragedy and heartache.
Or so Obi-wan felt. However things that remained unspoken, were often misunderstood. That didn't change the way Obi-wan's heart relished the idea. Beyond all things physical, he wanted to fix Anakin. He wanted for him to be happy. He wanted to be that happiness, the thing that would make him whole.
Regardless of what Anakin's thoughts truly were, at the very least he seemed comforted by the statement.
"I promise." Obi-wan said more seriously, his pulse quickening. Those words were more a vow than Anakin would ever realize, more than he could ever know. And if Obi-wan was effective, he would never know. He could never know the depth of how he cared for him. It was all that filled his heart, and all that tormented him.
The lift stopped at the ground floor, the doors opening to the entry hall. Obi-wan gave Anakin a step of distance and took a breath, not realizing he had hardly breathed at all in such close proximity. He bled the tension from his body that had held taut in his muscles and pulled himself to focus. Curiously he saw Ankain's stance become lax as the boy took a breath as well, his eyes averted to the floor below him.
Obi-wan chose to look past the blustered demeanor of his Padawan, passing it off as nerves from their current situation. Fleeing a temple under such circumstances couldn't have been casual affair. It could have easily been relief shaded with reservation in his Padawan's eyes, reluctance or fear keeping his breath bated while their bodies had been close. Proximity may have been no factor to the boy at all. Nerves, anxiety, everything could be explained away under such things.
Quickly Obi-wan stowed away such thoughts for later. "Now let's get going, shall we?" He said reassuringly to the boy who stood beside him, so in need of support from his Master. Now, more than ever. Obi-wan could see it in his eyes, in the way his shoulders caved slightly from the weight of more than any boy his age should have ever had to bear.
Not two steps out of the lift, a voice chimed throughout the hall with its insufferable grating whine that seemed to be engineered to test the limits of Obi-wan's breaking point. And he was very near to it, he thought with dread. It was only made worse by the stiffening of Anakin's shoulders, the way his pallor went a shade pale of his usual porcelain glow.
It made Obi-wan want to scream and yell, to tear the man down to the very atoms of which he was comprised. How dare he touch his Padawan, how dare he lay a finger on him. Anakin was his to protect, and this man had hurt him. His heart demanded a blood sacrifice while his mind entreated him to keep his composure.
"Master Kenobi, Padawan Skywalker, where do you think you're going?" Zaann called after them, the sound of footfall nearing closer.
Anakin faltered. Obi-wan took him by the hand, looking back into his eyes, restraining the fire that burned inside. "Ignore him, we have nothing to say to him." Obi-wan ordered with mild strictness that Anakin followed with a look of relief.
"Stop there, right now." Zaann called after them again, finally reaching them before they made their way through the temple doors. Sensing the man close, and the dread it stirred in his beloved, Obi-wan stopped, turning on his heel and taking a stride forward to bring himself between his Padawan and the monster who had hurt him.
Obi-wan could feel the hot anger roll off him, he didn't even try to hide it. He had slain nine Sith single handedly. He wanted Zaann to fear him, to cower like the miserable excuse of a man he was. He wanted to crush him like a bug under his boot, with a twist of his ankle.
"You will not take another step." Obi-wan ordered coldly, seeing Zaann's eyes light up with odd delight in response.
Obi-wan sneered at him, a curl of disgust on his lip. "Aren't you supposed to be teaching a class, Master Kenobi?" Zaann's cold violet gaze fell to Anakin, who stared listlessly at the floor again, wishing he might fade from sight if he tried hard enough.
"And you are supposed to be in class." Zaann said with a soft inflection, his voice just dancing around the edge of what Obi-wan knew to be a threat.
Obi-wan stepped forward again, only mere inches away from the Zabrak. "We are leaving." He stated, perhaps more to Anakin than to the miserable waste of life that stood in front of him.
"Oh are you now?" Zaann said with mock surprise.
"You are a fraud and a monster." Obi-wan ground out under his breath. "And once I get back to Coruscant, the rest of the Council will see you for the pathetic thing you truly are. You will never hold the rank of Master again, if I have anything to say about it." He said, growing vehemence to his voice as he went on.
No, if Obi-wan had anything to do about it he would already have ceased to draw breath. Kenobi relished the thought with a sense of longing.
Zaann's eyes lit up with amusement, a sly smile on the corner of his mouth. "Be my guest." He said smartly, as if there was a joke that only he had been privy to understanding. "The temple is hardly a prison." He added with a smirk.
Give me a reason, just one reason to cut you in half where you stand…
Obi-wan clenched his fists, breathing deep through his nostrils, gritting his teeth. His restraint was a thin frayed strand, barely holding him together at all.
Not wanting to turn his back to an enemy, Obi-wan did so with unease as he brought an arm around Anakin's shoulders to guide the boy out. He wanted this to be the last they would see of Zaann, but for some reason he didn't feel that was the case, no matter how badly he wished it were. Though he didn't turn to look away, he could feel the man's eyes burn into the back of his skull.
….
It's going to be alright. I promise.
Those words repeated endlessly in Anakin's mind, between thoughts of his own incompetence, and the fact that his hallucination meant he was most certainly going mad. However he taunted himself, a warmth accompanied those words, just like the warmth of his Master's arms that had held him for that brief moment. He felt the pull between them, the one that he thought he must have been mistaking for something else...
It didn't matter. He didn't deserve the man anyways, Anakin told himself. He would forever stand eclipsed by his Master's beautiful shadow. And he would be happy there, admiring him, hating himself all the while.
Hating himself for the cowardice that gripped him as Zaann approached them. Weak. Weak and thoughtless and so many other undesirable things. No, he didn't amount to much at all. Like always his Master came rushing to the rescue, standing between him and the monster that might rip him to shreds if he had the chance.
Somehow Obi-wan had taken his frozen Padawan and whisked him away. Anakin's mind was still stuck on hating himself, feeling awfully inadequate while his Master seemed to be the exact opposite. Kenobi had waltzed away with his Padawan in arm, taking them both towards their ship which was settled down exactly where they had left it.
Stepping aboard, Obi-wan shrugged the cloak off his broad shoulders, tossing it casually on the bench in the lounge of the small vessel. And the space hadn't been much more than that bench, along with a small pop-up table that retracted from beneath it, and a few lockers adorning the opposite wall.
The stale smell of metal and dead air filled the cabin. Anakin breathed it in reminiscently. He would always remember his first space voyage, from his homeworld of Tatooine to Naboo. That corvette had been much bigger and spacious than this small transport, but in the innermost cabins, it had smelled very much the same. If he could bottle the scent and take it with him, he would.
Distantly the smell also reminded him of Qui-gon, his would-be Master. His sternness, his long mousy gray hair. Sometimes Anakin wondered how Obi-wan had lasted under his mentorship. The two of them were so opposite, or so it seemed. But in some ways they had been the same. Qui-gon had an open warmth about him that Obi-wan had shared. Only with Qui-gon it seemed automatic, default, with the cool sternness he could portray being secondary.
With Obi-wan, the warmth had not at all been default, or automatic. It was something that the man seemed to reflexively hide, something that perhaps he felt he had to compensate for. For the first couple years of their Master-Padawan relationship, Anakin had felt its scarcity with a dull ache in his tiny chest.
Perhaps where Obi-wan painted strict reliance to the code and sternness to cover for his softer tendencies, Qui-gon had been mindful to be empathetic and kind to compensate for his self assured single mindedness that Anakin heard at times, could be quite problematic. Or so Obi-wan had said.
It took some time, but eventually Anakin was able to see his Master for how he truly was. He had learned how to see the carefully managed heart of Obi-wan Kenobi. It was pruned and trimmed meticulously, careful not to let it grow out of control. Attachments would be dealt with systematically, finding the weeds that would sprout in the all too fertile soil of the man's heart, trimming them down or pulling them out entirely.
"Go ahead and cycle the primers, I'll get us ready for take-off." Obi-wan said routinely, turning the corner just beyond to get to work.
The words pulled Anakin from his deeply entranced haze. "Yeah, I'm on it." He said distantly, pushing through into the cockpit where he turned the primers, cycling them through as his Master had instructed.
His mind was still back in the past, and in the not so distant past. What he had felt only moments ago pulled at his heart naggingly. Anakin reasoned against it. But he had felt it before, hadn't he? There had been fleeting moments where he felt something spark between him and his Master. Anakin's mind was all but blocking out the way Obi-wan had come back to himself that night when he had been buried deep inside of him already.
He wanted to think it didn't mean anything, that it had nothing to do with how Obi-wan really felt. It wasn't real, that's what he said. He would have never done such a thing. He wasn't capable of it. It was just a Sith twisted fantasy made to divide them, to ruin them from the inside out. That's how Anakin had rationalized it.
But then in his quarters, in the heat of rising emotions he found himself beneath the man again. How his Master's hands held tightly around his wrists, it was like an aphrodisiac. Anakin clasped one hand around his own wrist, his heart tickling lightly in his chest as he wished the man's hand would hold him again.
Another pang of unworthiness sent after the wanting, turning the longing to emptiness in an instant. He was nothing, no one.
A flash of the monster staring him down shot through his mind again. There was something wrong with him. Fundamentally wrong. The wicked beast filled his senses. The thick stink of rotting flesh suddenly filled the air as a chill prickled down the back of his neck. He thought he might have felt the thing breathing on his shoulder, the soft guttural rasping of its lungs inflating and compressing.
His body went stiff and his blood ran cold. It's not there, Anakin thought. There was no way it could be. But he found himself unable to convince himself entirely, and he was lacking the courage to look over his shoulder and see.
Weak, pathetic, useless.
It didn't matter. He couldn't hate himself enough to make his body move. He would sit and stew in it, making him feel that much more powerless.
Then a hand fell on his shoulder making his body jump as he gasped involuntarily, the aftershock of tremors racking his body in the next moment.
"I'm sorry- I didn't mean to frighten you," Obi-wan said in a concerned voice, his face clearly pained.
Anakin bit back tears.
Weak.
He shook his head, forcing himself to focus.
"Are you alright?" Obi-wan asked. Anakin could see his arm twitch towards him, but his Master pulled it back just as quickly. Iron restraint even for the simplest gestures.
"Don't worry about it, let's just get out of here." Anakin said, taking a large heaving breath.
"Very well then," Obi-wan said, looking no more reassured and highly skeptical.
Anakin kicked the small transport to life and began to move away from the planet's pull, slowly yet surely. As the ship gained altitude the atmospheric resistance became minimal, then ceased entirely as they glided out in the black open of space. It was eerily vast and empty to him, which was strange. Space travel was hardly his favorite past time but he had never felt it so ominous.
Anakin began to punch in the coordinates for Coruscant, which had been largely from memory anymore. Though Obi-wan always insisted he double check to be sure. Getting lost in the uncharted regions was his least favorite hobby, so his Master had assured him time and time again. Anakin was in the middle of doing just that when his Master interrupted his thoughts.
"Just wait a second, I'm going to try to get ahold of Coruscant before we leave." Obi-wan said.
"Can't we do that from hyperspace?" Anakin asked, only slightly annoyed before he looked over to see another concerned frown on his Master's face.
"What's wrong Master?" Anakin asked.
"I think something's wrong with our com array. But that can't be, can it?" He asked. Anakin could feel the man's suspicion leaking through.
Anakin tried the com, seeing it failing to connect to any external uplinks. It didn't even acknowledge any uplinks even existed. "It has to be us. There's no way everything else is down."
A grim expression fell over Obi-wan's previously concerned look. "I don't like this."
And Anakin understood his meaning. First their personal coms were down, now their ship's com array failed to work, too. But it was crazy to assume any of it had been designed. Surely it had to have been just bad luck. Anakin could already hear his Master's voice in his mind in response to his thoughts.
No such thing as luck.
And that meant for good and bad luck like.
"It could be anything from a bad connection, fried circuit or a broken sensor. I can try and figure it out but it will take a little while. Fixing it would take even longer, depending on what's wrong. I doubt this thing's got an exo-suit in it, so if it is an external sensor we'll have to put the ship down to get to it." Anakin started, switching over to the mechanical part of his mind that dealt in sensors and capacitors.
Obi-wan put his hand to his face, running it down over his beard. It was something he did when he was distressed or perplexed.
"No, that'll take too long." Obi-wan mused. "Go ahead and punch in the coordinates."
"I can work up some diagnostics while she's running through hyperspace, if you want. See if it's a simple fix or not." Anakin suggested, itching to get to work a problem that he might actually be able to fix.
Obi-wan looked at him with an amused expression. "I doubt I could keep you from doing just that even if I asked you to forget about it."
Anakin smiled at him, a genuine, somewhat bashful smile. Obi-wan glowed back at him. Keying in the coordinates he kicked the hyperdrive in gear, seeing the darkness slashed through with bleeding starlines that pulled tight into long streaks of glowing white light.
Giddy to work on something, to feel of use again, Anakin sprung up from his chair at the helm and made his way through the back of the ship to a control panel.
The feeling of having a task set before him gave him purpose. It nearly made him forget all the bad feelings, just for the moment. It made the words useless, helpless and weak all but cease from ruminating in his mind. It was a welcome remedy, even if the situation was shrouded by a veil of less than desirable circumstance.
Rummaging around in the control panel, everything seemed to be connected as it ought to have been. Running a few other tests, he found all else in the array was optimally configured as well. That only left a few possibilities, all dealing with the external sensors, like he had feared. And setting down now, was not an option.
He was headed back to the helm to report back to his Master when he stumbled over something, he wasn't quite sure what it had been. As Anakin turned to right himself, he saw a figure standing over him. It was a familiar figure clothed in Jedi robes, violet eyes staring out at him with a sharp yellow hue spiking from the center.
A snarling smile curled on the man's lips, his unlit saber gripped tightly in hand. Anakin found himself frozen, sprawled onto his back helplessly, his voice lost somewhere between his lips and his throat.
Zaann stepped closer, his blade igniting, the sizzling hiss of his saber coming to life as he held it over Anakin. He could feel the heat from the blade emanating, burning his skin uncomfortably with its heat.
"You're going to die. Your Master's going to die. And it's all your fault." Zaann snarled, pulling the blade back as he made for one devastating blow.
Anakin pulled his arms up to his face reflexively, a scream ripping from taut vocal chords. But nothing happened.
"Anakin!" Obi-wan cried out, rushing to kneel beside him as he sat up, confused, looking around for the man who was now, nowhere to be found.
I'm going crazy for real this time, Anakin thought, dread hollowing him out.
"What happened? What's wrong?" Obi-wan said, his voice unsteady and frantic.
"I'm tired, I think I just need to lay down," Anakin said feeling a haze of fatigue fall over him.
"Tell me what happened." Obi-wan insisted, his voice nearing anger.
What was he supposed to say? What was there to say? Just thinking about it made his head spin. Anakin moved to stand, but was caught again by some invisible wave or current that seemed to make standing impossible.
"Now stay right there," Obi-wan ordered sternly.
"I'm fine!" Anakin barked back at him.
Obi-wan looked at him silently, contemplatively, finding composure.
"Just, just go back and pilot the ship. I'm going to rest." Anakin said in defeat.
Obi-wan's eyes relaxed as his brow smoothed out. "What did you see?"
"I didn't-"
"Don't lie to me. I can tell when you're lying." Obi-wan said in a calm manner, his stare suddenly becoming knowing, and somehow too invasive. It sent a shiver up Anakin's spine.
"I saw Zaann." Anakin said, submitting.
Obi-wan remained silent, his gaze unchanging as he waited for Anakin to continue. He must have felt there was more.
"He said we were both going to die and that it was my fault." Anakin said, his shoulders slumping as he completed the admission, as if it had been held there heavily.
"I see." Obi-wan said with understanding, as if he were contemplating some Masterly advice to give in return.
A few seconds passed in silence. "It could be a warning." Obi-wan said in thought.
Anakin snapped. "It could mean i'm going crazy!" He shouted angrily.
Obi-wan's gaze softened with compassion. "You are many things. Crazy is not one of them." He said, stating it as if it were fact. He reached out a hand to feel Anakin's forehead. It sent another wave of shivers throughout his body.
"Though I do think you should lie down for a little while." Obi-wan declared.
Anakin moved to stand, this time feeling substantially stronger than the last. "I actually think I'm okay," he said, stretching out his limbs. "I just felt woozy for a second. I'm alright now."
"You look feverish." Obi-wan countered.
"Shouldn't you be piloting?" Anakin said, frustrated, trying to get his Master to pay attention to something else, but secretly not wanting him to go at all.
Or maybe it wasn't such a secret afterall. "It's got an autopilot, you know." Obi-wan said with a raised brow. "Lay down." He said. It wasn't a suggestion, it was an order. Somehow Anakin felt himself unable to resist.
Anakin laid himself down on the padded bench in the small lounge. Obi-wan wadded up his cloak as a pillow for him, smoothing a hand through Anakin's dampened locks. He knelt by his Padawan in silence, stroking his hair, holding him. There was something in the silence, something unspoken yet loud all the same. It stirred the guilt, the unworthiness and shame. It coaxed confessions from the recesses of Anakin's heart and mind. Suddenly they became too much for him to bear alone.
"I'm sorry." Anakin said with meaning, his heart breaking with the gravity of how he was so truly remorseful.
Obi-wan turned to face him, still kneeling by the bench. His blue eyes held uncertainty, a measure of curiosity. "What could you possibly have to be sorry for?" He asked, genuinely lost to his meaning.
Anakin thought how he could even put it into words. He didn't know if it was possible. He was sorry for existing, for taking away Obi-wan's choice of a Padawan, for being forced on him to begin with. He was sorry for being such a terrible student, for failing him time and time again. For being so weak in spite of all the effort his Master put into him.
"I'm sorry you were forced to take me on. I know you didn't want to." Anakin said, his throat constricting around the last few words.
"No," Obi-wan said seriously, taking his chin in hand so that he couldn't look away. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me." He said unflinchingly. "I mean it. I would never want someone else."
Anakin felt the pull between them as he had before, this time it was louder, more unavoidable, impossible not to notice. He saw a longing behind the kindness and tenderness. He wondered if it was real or imagined. After all, it was him he found at the heart of his desires, in the place where only sensation existed. No matter who it was, it would always be him. His perfect jewel blue eyes staring into his soul like nothing else existed.
I would never want someone else. He hadn't said he wouldn't want another Padawan or apprentice. No, he would never want someone else. Anakin looked back at him still, testing the idea. Obi-wan Kenobi, wanting him. Anakin searched his eyes for the true meaning of what he had just said, feeling his Master's hands still hold at his jaw, fingertips gently pressed against his flesh.
He couldn't believe it. He was afraid to. The cold void of doubt swallowed him up from the inside, pulling any hope from the horizon of his thoughts.
As if to answer the harrowing uncertainty that took residence in Anakin's chest, Obi-wan leaned forward to press a reassuring kiss to his cheek, just near the corner of his mouth. By some involuntary movement, or perhaps driven by the magnetism that pulled between them, Anakin turned his head to catch his Master's lips on his own.
And he didn't pull away.