Undiscovered Country
She hadn't asked why.
Bail Organa had been the one to make the call, since it would be tantamount to suicide for any Jedi to disclose his location, even over a supposedly secure channel. Having the second-most-recognizable Jedi in the Grand Army of the Republic make such a call would be only worse.
Obi-Wan had been meditating when Bail returned, more out of habit than any sincere expectation that the Force would aid him. There had been no relief from the Force that he had served without question and it was a blight that had plagued him since the moment that his own men had decided to put him in their blaster sights. Losing Anakin--Vader, brother, son--had only made it worse.
But he had said nothing of that to Senator Organa. He had simply lifted his eyes from the white knuckles of his hands and silently demanded an explanation from the one man who had been willing to help them without any expectation of a reward.
Bail had the same world-weary look that all of them had learned by instinct in the last days, but there was a bit of amused relief in his dark eyes that suggested that his efforts had not been in vain.
"She says, 'Hold tight, Ben, and I'll be there for a bit of moral support before you can start to miss me.'"
It sounded like her, all right. The Ben nickname was an old one, but one that she had claimed was shortened from Bendoverbackwards Kenobi because of his willingness to make an extra effort on the behalf of anyone other than himself.
"How long?"
"Two days," Bail explained. "If you'd like us to stay until..."
"No."
It was dangerous enough to stay here, since Polis Massa was nominally within the boundaries of the Empire, but as yet neutral. They could be fairly certain that no one would think to look for a dead Senator, a Jedi Master, two newborns and a rebellious Senator here, but every day that passed with that particular group in one place was a greater danger than the day before.
Fortunately, Yoda had departed the day before, but the arrangements for the children were more painstaking than a self-imposed exile, so the others remained.
There was no need to explain this danger to the man who had consciously and conscientiously risked his life and career just to keep the remaining Jedi from further disaster, so instead, Obi-Wan forced a smile that was ninety percent heartache and ten percent mirth.
"Leia needs her mother's care," he said simply. "When do you plan to leave?"
"By your leave, within the hour," Bail informed him. "Would you like to..."
"If I may," Obi-Wan confirmed, pushing to his feet.
His joints creaked with the effort of rising, as if he had aged thirty years in the last week, but he knew that it was more an aftereffect of trying to kill the man who had been closer than a brother than anything else.
The station had not been very well-equipped to house infants, since it was a mining outpost full of unwed workers, but they had managed to make Padme's children comfortable with supplies from the Tantive IV.
Luke was still dozing contentedly, but Leia's dark eyes stared up at him from above her rosy cheeks as if she had fully expected him to show up. His hands had trembled at first when reaching for her, but after two days of taking turns with the children, they remained steady as he lifted her from the makeshift bassinet.
She turned slightly as if reaching back to him, then sighed softly. It sounded almost exactly like the sound Padme used to emit when he would bring news of Anakin's latest dangerous adventure and it rendered him completely incapable of speech.
I wish I could tell you that you'll grow up with your father's strong heart, that you'll remind me of your mother every time I see you.
I wish I could do something other than fear what your father gave you and know that I may never see you again.
I should be able to say my farewells here, but instead, I can't say a word.
Instead of saying all the things he meant to, he held her with a love so familial that the Jedi would have never been able to condemn it.
She was certainly an attachment, but she was one that he should have had to endure for the rest of his life.
"As a High Princess of Alderaan," Bail interrupted his thoughts quietly, "she will need many safeguards. I would be honored if we could consider you one of those."
"I can't," he blurted.
A surprised hurt came quickly to the surface in the wash of emotions that he saw in the eyes of a new father, but it was not what Obi-Wan had meant to say.
"Tatooine is hardly within swatting distance of the Core," Obi-Wan explained hastily. "I doubt that I could be of any use to her from a moisture farm."
"No," Bail agreed with a gently wry smile, "but you could be a haven if the need arose."
Yoda had said something very similar in regards to Leia's older brother, but there was nothing that he could find wrong in that assertion.
"Whenever she requires it," he conceded. The station felt appropriately empty once the Tantive had left, so he busied himself as much as possible with the preparations for the journey.
It wasn't an easy task, since Bail had taken care of the supplies that he would need for the journey there and left funds for Owen and Beru Lars as a gift 'between surrogates.'
There were even supplies to allow him to set up a new life in the wastelands of Anakin's homeworld and they had all been stored, lying in wait for his transport.
By and large, the inhabitants of the station had no interest in bothering him or his young charge. Luke was a relatively quiet child as if he had been sobered by the loss that had come so early in his life and seemed easily pleased by his guardian's weak attempts at amusing the both of them.
He might have been able to relax into the duty more easily--Anakin had certainly been privy to his reluctant sense of humor from the beginning--but he could not forget that this should have been Anakin's task to perform.
Well, it was not a matter of 'should have been.' Had Anakin been more devoted to the life that he had accepted as a Jedi than his childhood infatuation with a Queen, there would be no child left as an orphan. There would be no reason for Obi-Wan to explain Anakin's death to someone who had never met him.
But Anakin had chosen this path and he should have been the one to accept both the joys and consequences of where it had led him.
He spent most of his time tending to Luke, since he had not yet mastered the art of sleeping for more than a few hours at a time, but the time seemed to pass too quickly before a comm came through from landing control.
"A Lady Carmyn Delairs has used your landing clearance to petition for a berth."
"Let her land," Obi-Wan instructed, "and let her know my location."
"Yes, sir."
He had been quite young when he first met Lady Delairs and from the way the Council had worded the arrangement, he had expected someone who weighed ten kilos less when she removed her jewelry and who used words that would confuse any Padawan in his right mind.
Finding that the Corellian Ambassador's daughter had a passion for fuschia, from her hair to her corset top and an even greater passion for traumatizing holofilms came as something of a shock. Nevertheless, they had gone into the friendship without reservations and allowed themselves a bond of friendship that was an entirely appropriate use of human affection.
As Carmyn entered, he noted that little had changed, though he could not say the same for himself. The fuschia hair had long reverted to a dark, burnished color that she claimed was her own. Her dress still tended to suggest someone prepared for a good garbage-pit race, but she had developed a certain solemnity that didn't seem characteristic of her.
"Ben," she greeted quietly.
He wasn't sure if she was speaking in low tones so as to not wake Luke or if she feared that anything louder might shatter the atmosphere that he had managed to maintain with the very little sanity that he felt he still possessed.
Either way, it was enough. He greeted her with the customary embrace, but she pulled him into one that was unfamiliarly intense. There was none of the passion or attachment that would have made him balk at the gesture, only a heartfelt attempt to absorb his pain by embracing it.
He did not argue with it.
"How long have you been alone?" she asked.
Sometimes, it feels as if it's been my entire life.
"Two days," he supplied, "but our other passenger has kept me in good company."
The look in her kohl-streaked eyes as she pulled away suggested that she knew better than to believe anything he said in good humor, but she did not comment on it.
"That's good to hear," she mused, glancing at Luke's sleeping form. "He won't be much trouble?"
Another question that he couldn't answer honestly, but he managed the first genuine smile in days. "None at all." He shouldn't have been surprised to find that Carmyn had managed to transform her personal shuttle into something that looked at home at a baby shower, but it amused him nonetheless. It amused him further that the woman who had claimed to have never married on the principle that children might come along insisted on getting Luke settled while he piloted them to the hyperspace jump point.
He expected to find her still fussing over Luke in the cargo hold when he left the cockpit, but she drew him into the galley instead with a strong mug of tisane.
"You looked like you could use this..."
He squinted at the cupboards with a mournful look. "Don't you have some cognac in there?"
"I might," she conceded, "but I'm not letting a depressed Jedi anywhere near it, no matter how good his behavior's been."
"I'm not depressed," Obi-Wan protested.
It was the truth and she didn't dispute it.
"I'm..."
There was a phrase that Qui-Gon had been fond of that he had rarely heard used by any other. It was, however, the only statement that was completely honest here.
"I have been brought low," he stated.
Her eyes drifted closed as if she understood too well what he meant by that, but she nodded in earnest understanding. "I know," she agreed. "That's why I came."
"I didn't want to ask," he pressed on, "but I don't know who I can trust and..."
"Obi-Wan."
Her hand rested on the table between them, a silent invitation that he was tempted to accept, but he let the warmth of the tisane sting his palms instead and willed his mind to shut down before he remembered why he had been humbled.
"When did it happen?" she aked gently.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "I can't tell if it started three years ago or twenty-three. I don't know if it's my fault that he went unpunished or if I didn't train him right."
"Obi-Wan," she repeated, her tone more of a rebuke than an interruption this time.
For someone with such a good sense of humor, she could have a fearsome stare.
"Did you force him to go to the Dark Side?" she demanded.
"Of course not," came his instinctive response.
"Then what part did you have in his turn?"
I did everything wrong.
I did everything.
I did nothing.
I loved him too much, but forbade him to do the same for another.
"A crime of omission," he answered.
"You taught him everything that would have served him if he had honorable intentions," Carmyn protested. "What omission was there?"
"The omission of my ability to let him be mortal," he retorted sharply. "It was probably the most powerful thing I could have given him, but I was too blind..."
"Obi-Wan."
No rebuke in her voice this time. Perhaps she agreed with him.
"You know that's not true," she said simply.
It would have been much easier to accept that statement. It would have eased the guilt and given him a reason to believe in what he had been for so long. Instead, the only truth he could find was one that broke his heart further.
"I don't know if anything is true any more."