Obi-Wan

It was the end of a long day and Darth Vader finally had a moment to himself. He had managed to get his drunken son home and into bed, where Luke had passed out. Han, Leia and the Wookie had been given guest rooms in his castle. And Palpatine, well, Palpatine wasn't his problem for the moment. He presumed the red-cloaked guards had taken care of the rats that had been beating on the Emperor. The whole scene in the Throne Room had been so unreal Vader still had a hard time believing it had actually happened. And to think that the Emperor had actually LIKED that cake Solo had baked!

Removing the black body armor, mask and helmet, Vader hooked himself up to the respirator. Of course, he had taken the added precaution of securely locking his bedroom door before removing the armor. The last thing he wanted was for that imbecile Solo barging in on him during the middle of the night and seeing him undressed. No one knew what he looked like and he had grown accustomed to it that way. It was bad enough that he had told Solo his real name in a moment of weakness. Who knew what damage the smuggler could do with that information?

How was he to deal with all these problems? His family situation was a nightmare! His son stinking drunk on a poisoned cake and talking to dead men, his daughter engaged to that Solo and Solo living in his house while plotting the Emperor's assassination! It was enough to drive any sane Sith mad!

Worse, he couldn't even have the satisfaction of killing Solo!

What was a father to do?

"Perhaps I should meditate on it." Vader said to himself. Then he remembered the promise he had made to Luke, the one about the ten minutes of peace. Was it possible? Could he actually let go of the Dark Side for a measly ten minutes after all those years?

"Do or do not. There is no try."

Vader remembered Master Yoda's words of wisdom from his years as a Padawan. What would Yoda say about this situation? But then, the little green Jedi Master had never understood the concept of family. None of the Jedi did. How could they, raised since infants in the crèche by the Jedi, never having a mother or father. Yoda would probably just say the same old thing: it was wrong for a Jedi to marry, wrong to reproduce, wrong to care about one's children. The only thing that mattered to Master Yoda and the rest of the Council Members was staying loyal to the Order. Had he been so wrong to want both? It hadn't been his fault he had fallen in love with Padme.

"Why am I thinking of all this stuff for? I'm a Sith now. It's all in the past."

If he was going to meditate, he needed to clear his mind. Making himself comfortable on the meditation mat he kept in his quarters, Vader closed his eyes. One by one, he pushed stray thoughts out of his mind and locked them away. Going deeper and deeper inside himself, he searched for the serenity that he hadn't experienced in decades. Hate, anger and lust for revenge blocked his path, but he shoved them aside as well. A bright glow was ahead of him and he went towards it, curious as to what it could be. When he reached it, Vader discovered it was his love for Luke and Leia. He allowed himself to bask in its warm glow, content.

"Hello, Anakin." A voice interrupted him.

Darth Vader's startled eyes flew open. A ghostly, bluish-white apparition was standing before him. That robe, the beard, the blue eyes; it was familiar to him. But the last time he had seen Obi-Wan was when he had killed him! "How…?"

"There are many things about the Force you still have to learn, my very young apprentice." Obi-Wan said to Vader with a half smile on his face. "Surely you didn't think you could get rid of me that easily, did you?"

"You are no longer my master, Obi-Wan!" Vader rose to his feet to face the ghost that had barged unannounced into his quarters. "I am the master now and more powerful than you ever were!"

Obi-Wan rolled his blue eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. "Why must it always be competition with you, Anakin? Being a Jedi was never about power! What must I do to get that through your thick head? That's what happens when I take a podracer to be an apprentice!"

"And you, Obi-Wan, have always been getting yourself into disasters!"

"Oh, really?" Obi-Wan remarked. "Like when? I think your memory is a bit fuddled from being a Sith."

"I was always rescuing you! You couldn't keep yourself out of trouble for five minutes!" Vader pointed a finger at his former master accusingly, anger rising in his voice. "What kind of master were you? You got stuck in that pit of Gundarks on Vanqor, trapped in the arena on Geonosis and you jumped out of a window!"

"Well, I could say the same of you, Anakin."

"My name is Darth Vader!"

"What ever you say, Anakin."

"Are you deaf as well as dead?"

"I can hear you perfectly fine, my very, very, very young and astray apprentice. I could point out the numerous things you did as well, like falling into the Zone of Self Containment and not even bothering to tell me, the illegal garbage pit races and getting married! But I won't. We should try to put that behind us so we can straighten you out."

"Straighten ME out?! Why, you're the one that caused all the problems!" Vader shouted angrily, his voice sounding odd to his own ears without the mechanical unit on his mask that gave his voice that deep sound. "You nearly got us both killed on Ragoon-6! You suspected I was following the wrong trail but didn't say anything just because you weren't sure. Those bounty hunters almost killed us because you were worried about looking foolish!"

Instead of becoming angry, Obi-Wan remained calm. "If I remember that exercise correctly, Anakin, you ate muffin crumbs off the ground that day."

"So? It was part of the training exercise in tracking Wren!" Vader was quickly growing tired and annoyed at Obi-Wan's presence. "I've had enough of this debate. You will stop haunting my son and screwing up his brain!"

"Haunting?" Obi-Wan laughed. "I only give Luke advice when he needs it. Someone needs to be there to guide him on his quest to become a Jedi."

"Be gone, evil spirit!" Vader shouted at his former master's spirit.

Obi-Wan fell to the floor, laughing. "I forgot what a wit you had, youngling! Maybe you should try shaking some rattles and feathers, too!"

"What must I do to be rid of you?" Vader leaped forward, planning on landing on top of Obi-Wan's chest with his feet. But he only flew so far when the hose of the respirator yanked him backward, knocking him off his feet. Vader crashed to the floor with a loud thud, the breath knocked out of him momentarily.

Obi-Wan howled even harder from his spot on the floor, ghostly tears running down his face. "I missed being with you, Padawan. You used to play all those pranks on me, but I think this one backfired!"

Darth Vader shook his baldhead to clear it, and then got to his feet again. He glared at the ghostly Jedi Master, anger clear in his eyes. Nothing he tried seemed to work on this apparition. He didn't even understand how Obi-Wan could be here talking to him like this. Somehow he doubted if a lightsaber would cause any real damage to the spirit, it would only amuse his dead master more and he didn't wish to amuse Obi-Wan. No, he wanted him gone before he goofed even more things up! But how do you get rid of a ghost? But first, he might as well get a few more things off his chest. "You knew Princess Leia was my daughter and yet you hooked her up with that smuggler, Solo!"

"I suppose that's my fault as well, hmmm?" Obi-Wan picked himself off the floor and stood watching his former apprentice. "He seemed quite a capable fellow. And you know, you really need to work on controlling that temper of yours, Anakin. That's the root cause of many of your problems. Yes, I'm to blame for many things that went wrong in your training and I deeply regret that. But you are the Chosen One, Anakin, and you must restore balance to the Force. I thought you were lost to me, but since you can see me now I guess you're not that lost anymore. But we do need to work on your people skills. Going around Force choking people is just not acceptable."

"I'll Force choke you, you… you… GHOST!" Vader reached out with the Force as he had done hundreds of times but to no avail. He just couldn't grip a windpipe that wasn't there. His face turned red from the anger surging through him.

"Anakin, you best calm down before you blow a gasket."

"And I wouldn't have gaskets if it weren't for you and that magma pit!"

"Would you feel better if I were to let you push me into a magma pit?"

"But it wouldn't DO you anything!" Vader protested loudly.

"Well, I certainly wouldn't want to go in one when I was alive!"

"This is crazy! I'm arguing with a ghost! Why in the galaxy am I arguing with a ghost for? I must be nuts!" Vader sat down heavily on his bed, the anger fleeing from him. "It finally happened. General Solo drove me nuts!"

Kneeling down before him, Obi-Wan gazed into his Padawan's blue eyes. "You're not nuts, Anakin. I'm really here and talking to you. And your son isn't nuts, either. He doesn't need to see a shrink."

"Just stay away from my son! You already turned him into a geek around women!" Vader ordered in his best command voice. "Don't you have someone else to go haunt besides Luke?"

Obi-Wan smiled, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. "Yes, actually I DO have someone else to go haunt besides Luke. It'll keep me very, very busy."

"Good!" Vader said, relieved. "Then go get started."

"I'll start this very minute!" Obi-Wan assured him with a grin.

To be continued…

Well, hope you found that funny! The planets and missions referred to in this chapter are from the Jedi Quest series, which I love reading. Obi-Wan is one of my favorite characters. And yes, that was Mara in the last chapter and you'll see her again in future chapters. I'll try to get the next chapter up soon! And thanks for all the wonderful reviews! They inspire me to write more chapters. J

Anonymous-cat: I didn't put any links in my story. Perhaps the spacing I tried using in two places caused the weird blue 'links' you saw in chapter 9? I wanted to separate the scene changes. Using the regular little dots wasn't working, as they disappeared whenever I change the file to html. So I tried using a mixture of . and * in the story. Maybe they confused your browser? If the 'links' were located where the scenes changed (from Luke on the street to Vader's palace, from Vader's palace to Palpatine's Throne Room), then it was the spacing I tried. I just looked at chapter 9 on fanfics and I don't see the links at all … ???