The vastness of space often held a sort of solace for Obi-Wan Kenobi. He would never have gone as far as to say that it offered answers to the most complex questions of his life, but he had found direction amongst the myriad of twinkling lights. But gazing out beyond the forward viewport, into the star pricked velvet back drop did little to allay the static building inside of him, threatening to be released with a violent explosion. If the young man sitting next to him hadn't been there, he would have long since vented what boiled inside of him.
He prohibited his mind from all thoughts of the Sith Lord, his former apprentice, who he had imprisoned in the stern of the ship. Allowing that would only increase the synergy of emotion roiling inside of him and the temptation to let loose was already nearly overwhelming. Instead he focused on their strange arrival, who had ended the gruesome battle between he and Anakin. He did not want to think what would have happened had Ben not stopped Anakin.
As soon as he linked with the hyperspace ring and set the coordinates for a several jump retreat to Master Yoda, Obi-Wan turned to the teenage boy. "Explain," he ordered shortly.
"Not one for circling your landing, I like that," Ben said a wry tone to his voice. "As for an explanation I'm not sure where to begin. I'm from fifty-nine years into the future. My father was named Luke Skywalker, the son of Anakin Skywalker and twin to Leia Organa."
"Organa?" Obi-Wan asked, thinking of his friend Bail.
"A divergence on the story that we'll come to later," Ben answered.
"But it is Bail Organa?" Obi-Wan insisted.
The young boy eyed him intensely. "It is. You trusted him." He shook his head, the man of red-gold locks furrowing with the motion. "You trust him. Anyway, in the battle I interrupted, Anakin originally did fall into that lava bed. From what my father told me you believed him dead, but he crawled his way out and Palpatine restored what little of him was left. He became a hybrid of man and machine."
Obi-Wan hissed in a painful breath and held it tight. This had to be a lie. He couldn't have caused such damage to Anakin. This young man was what his former apprentice had professed, nothing more then a clever deceiver who knew how to infiltrate his way into someone's trust. Anakin would have come back on his own accord, he would have realized his mistake and let Obi-Wan guide him. That was the only truth he could accept. Not what this boy was spouting as though reciting a history lesson.
"I know this must be painful for you," Ben said not without feeling.
"How is it not for you? If you are truly who you claim to be," Obi-Wan accused, that torrent inside of him rising on his words.
"I never knew him!" Ben snapped. "I never knew you or a lot of my family because they were murdered, destroyed because you two were fools. Because Palpatine wasn't discovered and the Jedi were destroyed. Now I'm trying to keep my personal problems with you and Anakin and the rest of your Order out of this, but if you want to go down that spacelane, by all means please continue." Ben rocketed out of the co-pilot chair. "Look, I didn't want to come here, but my father...I was the only one left."
The instant, angry retort died on Obi-Wan's lips as he saw the heartbreak on the young boy's features. "I'm sorry. How did your father die?"
"It's not important," the young Jedi said, steel framing his every features, his every muscle. "Here is where my history gets sketchy. You and Master Yoda split Dad and Aunt Leia. You take Dad to Tatooine to Owen and Beru Lars, we never knew why and Aunt Leia was raised by Bail Organa. The
long and short of it is, that when my father was twenty years old, you felt compelled to start him on his journey as a Jedi."
Obi-Wan's mouth dropped, literally. "Twenty? What in the Force's name was I thinking?"
"Whatever you were thinking, it proved to be useful. However, you were unable to continue his training, you were killed saving him, Leia, and a smuggler named Han Solo," Ben continued his narrative.
"Now I'm consorting with smugglers, this tale continues to get more intriguing," Obi-Wan said, forcing levity in the wake of his foretold death.
A small smile, the first Obi-Wan remembered seeing on the young features pulled Ben's face and it instantly reminded him of a younger Anakin, constricting his heart with both pain and fond nostalgia. "Eventually, you appear to him as a ghost and tell him to go to Yoda on Dagobah. Hiss
training was short but eventually he went to face his father, Lord Vader"
Obi-Wan found himself holding his breath once again. The future had been changed by Ben's arrival or at least so the boy asserted, but he needed to know that all had or will have worked out fine.
"He brought him back to the good side and Vader once again became Anakin, keeping Palpatine from killing his son," Ben quickly answered, as if sensing Obi-Wan's trepidation.
"So the prophecy was true, he did or will or would have brought balance," Obi-Wan said, glancing back to the hidden cell where Anakin lay unconscious. "I couldn't bring that out of him." Incredibly acute, Ben remained silent. "But if Palpatine was destroyed, why the need to change the past?"
"It wasn't soon enough," Ben answered matter-of-fact. "The Yuuzhan Vong invaded our galaxy two years before I was born, a complete void in the Force, and overwhelming to my father's budding Jedi Order. I joined the war when I was fourteen but my efforts were certainly not going to change the sway. Not then."
The boy heaved a great breath, a weight that should have tumbled those sturdy shoulders weighed on him. "Many were sacrificed out right to the Vong's gods, others were implanted with mind-control spoors. Either way, we were whipped out. I'm the last of the Jedi in my time, Obi-Wan."
The Jedi Master shook his head. "But you can't possibly be fully trained." The boy's strength in the Force was not as great as Anakin's, but the way he controlled it, the way he had it wrapped around him like a heavy cloak was far more advanced then Anakin's ability. This fantastic story laid before him, was only amplified by Ben's presence. iHe had/i seemed to come out of nowhere.
"No, I would still call myself an apprentice. My training was cut short when...at fifteen. I've had to go it alone the last two years," Ben explained somewhat bashfully and it was the first time that Obi-Wan looked beyond the battle scars and practiced indifference and saw the young man before him.
There was no doubt in his mind that Ben's father had been instructing him in the ways of the Force and that the untimely cessation had been caused when Luke Skywalker had died. Yet, however ill-trained, Ben had traveled back in time fifty-nine years. It was staggering to think, he could not
imagine what it had been like to experience. At seventeen, Ben had stopped the Chosen One, who would become his grandfather.
"You realize that the changes you hope to make might preclude your own birth," Obi-Wan felt he had to be truthful with this young man who had been nothing but to him.
A solemn nod met his statement. "I know, but what else can be done."
Admiring the fortitude in one so young, Obi-Wan nodded. "It's these Yuuzhan Vong you mentioned, that worry me. I can't believe an entire race would be blanketed from the Force. The Force resides in all of us, in each cell. It surrounds us, penetrates us,.."
"And binds the galaxy together," Ben finished for him. "I've heard it before. But if what connects us to the Force is in the Yuuzhan Vong we can't sense it and they deny any connection to it. They are an aberration of life; revering everything that is natural but destroying it with as much zeal. As
warriors, the Jedi were admired but were thought only to be a worthy sacrifice to the gods in hope of securing a further hold on the galaxy."
"So you hope to change everything by simply bringing Anakin to the light two decades early," Obi-Wan ventured.
Ben chuckled wryly, with far too much bitterness for a child his age. "Hardly. I intend on shaking up much about this time and your Order."
"Pardon me?" Obi-Wan questioned, frowning. It was nearly laughable the turn his life had taken in these last few hours. He had learned that he had both doomed and forsaken Anakin, only to be indirectly responsible for his salvation. Then all those efforts had been wasted only a number of
decades later because extragalactic travelers, absent in the Force, had sought dominance. All culminating into a seventeen-year-old apprentice traveling fifty-nine years into the past to fix the wrongs of his grandfather and the body of family and friends surrounding him.
The ludicrousness of it all hit Obi-Wan in a rush of splattering laughter that was only propelled by the simmering energy inside of him. "I'm dreaming," he ventured to himself. "It must be that. I'll wake up and Anakin will be nine-years-old again and this is just one of my nightmares."
"And how do you explain me?" Ben asked folding his arms before him, an impatience radiating so strongly from him that Obi-Wan suspected him to tap his feet. "Indigestion?" Ben approached him until he was inches away from Obi-Wan, gazing up at the Jedi Master with a silent plea. "You have
to put it together, because I certainly can't do this on my own. If not, you're no use to me. Might as well go to Tatooine and live out your life as a lonely hermit. But if you really care about Anakin, if you care what happens to this galaxy and the people inside of it, then you'll help me?"
"Yes, of course." Obi-Wan pressed a hand to his forehead, temporarily holding back his spinning thoughts. To loose his head now would only make matters worse for them all. Ben was fighting hard to be brave, but he could see that the boy was frightened, tired, and needed the guidance of good
Master. "Forgive me."
Accepting with the barest of nods, Ben asked, "What's our next move?"
"I think it best we let Anakin alone until we reach Master Yoda," Obi-Wan answered. At present, Obi-Wan wasn't sure what he would say or do if he were to come face to face with Anakin. He could divert from his feelings for awhile, but he knew eventually they'd catch up to him. He could run a little farther before he fell exhausted.
"And he's not likely to accept who I am for a long while," Ben answered. "So we wait."
"You should get some rest," Obi-Wan suggested gently, though he feared to be alone with his thoughts.
That sardonic look, a constant companion for the young apprentice, fell on Ben's features. "I didn't just fight a battle."
"No, you used the Force to take you back in time," Obi-Wan countered with as much sarcasm.
Suddenly, Ben found the elongated starlines of hyperspace hypnotic. "Before my father died and we were skirting from one side of the galaxy to the other, evading the Vong, he would tell me of my mother, my aunt, uncle, and cousins, of you and my grandfather." Pain. That was something the
three beings on the ship shared, each shaping them and moving them in different directions. Obi-Wan vowed to help Ben through his. "We couldn't risk sleeping, not for an extended period of time and the stories helped keep us awake."
He flicked those oceanic eyes towards Obi-Wan. "Companionship, kept us alive. Made the hard years bearable, especially after mom died. You have to have things to cling on to, an attachment to keep you anchored when the tide rises too high. Do you know what I mean, Obi-Wan?"
What Ben spoke of was forbidden by the Jedi code, yet in the aftermath of near destruction, Obi-Wan could not fault his beliefs. If he had allowed Anakin to become attached to him, had become the anchor for him as Luke had been for Ben, then perhaps their fateful battle would never had to occur.
"No," he admitted softly . "But I think I'm beginning to." He offered a sly smile. "Tell me one of your father's tales, young Ben. Tell me what might have been."