The outer circle of Muracie, the capital city of Centares, was subdivided into orderly blocks set on either side of streets paved with smooth duracrete. It was a sharp contrast to the more organic sprawl and winding roads of the inner part of the city near the Rotunda where Anakin had spent time before. It was possible he'd encountered the Skrell District during the Battle of Centares when he, newly-knighted and freshly assigned to the leadership of the 501st Legion, had helped Master Shaak Ti retake the planet from the Separatists, but at the time he hadn't really had the time for sightseeing.

Now, he parked his bike next to Obi-Wan's speeder in what seemed to be a designated spot, and looked around carefully as he followed Obi-Wan up the steps to the door of a tall, square building. It was all white on the outside, with semi-transparisteel taking the place of luxurious and easily-damaged glass for windows.

"Is this where you live? It's huge." Half a city block huge. It was nothing compared to the Jedi Temple of course, but compared to a typical master and padawan suite like the one they'd shared it was enormous.

Obi-Wan laughed. "Not all of it is mine. The building is divided into many smaller apartments - I just live in one of them."

"Oh." The rooms Obi-Wan led him into were indeed much smaller than he'd expected given the outside. Maybe the size of a master-padawan suite. Probably a little bigger, Anakin guessed, giving the place a cursory probing in the Force. Several other presences lingered distinctly around the apartment, so Obi-Wan wasn't totally alone, but over everything Obi-Wan's presence was discernible in a clear, warm imprint. "Very home-like," he decided.

That earned him a raised eyebrow. "I need to set all this stuff down." Obi-Wan gestured at his satchel and the beat-up box he'd carried in from his speeder. "I'll just be a minute, and then I'll make you some tea, shall I? Or caff, if that's to your taste?" His voice floated back to Anakin as he disappeared into a back room.

"Don't worry about it, I'll make the tea!" Anakin called back, gravitating to the kitchen.

It was tiny, but Anakin had to smile at its meticulous cleanliness. He found the jar of tea leaves with ease, since it was out on the counter already, and everything else with only slightly less ease. Apparently, even if Obi-Wan didn't remember their quarters in the Temple, he had still kept all the organizational habits he always had.

He'd forgotten how warm Obi-Wan was. Master Ki-Adi's Force presence was always calm and cool, like a breeze that makes you shiver and clears your thoughts. In Anakin's memories, he had always thought of Obi-Wan as calm too, but Obi-Wan felt more like a banked fire that warmed your frozen hands and face and kept away the yawning dark. Maybe he still wasn't remembering Obi-Wan fully, since he hadn't been able to really sense Obi-Wan even once yet. His imprint was all over in this apartment, so why was Obi-Wan himself practically Force-opaque?

Anakin frowned down at his two mugs of tea. Something was missing.

"Obi-Wan, do you have any distilled Altunna nectar?"

"No! I have mu'nillan, though," Obi-Wan called. "Why?"

"Just trust me! Where is it?"

"Third cupboard on the bottom!"

Obi-Wan emerged from the back just as Anakin was putting the nectar bottle away again. He'd shed his coat and over-tunic and wore a short-sleeved shirt instead; Anakin suspected it was a beat-up work shirt, judging by the streaks of what looked like faded grease stains and the comfortable way it clung to him. Anakin stared at him, knowing it was rude, he couldn't feel him in the Force and he couldn't help it.

He seemed thinner than Anakin remembered, on the edge of too thin, but Anakin couldn't be totally positive. It had only been a little more than a year since he'd last seen Obi-Wan, and he was terrified at how much he'd forgotten to remember. The memories of Obi-Wan he did have he had treasured so carefully he'd worn them thin and calcified. Now, being able to stand in front of his master - see him alive and whole, and making a face at how long Anakin had stared without saying anything - almost brought him to astonished tears.

Narrowing his eyes at Anakin, Obi-Wan asked, "Do I even want to know what horrible things you've been doing to the tea?"

Blinking, Anakin shook his head. "Just trust me, Obi-Wan. If this isn't the best tea you've ever tasted, you can kick me out of the house right now." He handed one of the mugs across to Obi-Wan, and then thought of something. "Is it okay that I call you Obi-Wan? I mean - should I not? Is it weird? Because I can see how it might be weird, if-"

"It's fine."

"So, if you didn't remember your name, what do you go by around here?"

Cupping his hands around the warm mug, Obi-Wan said, "I go by Alpha. It was the only thing I remembered, from before. I knew it meant something important, but I couldn't remember why." He was looking at Anakin again in that same way, curious and even, like he wanted something but didn't know what.

Alpha. The clone to which Anakin had given that name had died with Obi-Wan in the blast from the same fallen AT-TE tank. And yet, apparently he had not. With everything that time had faded for him, Anakin could still see that explosion in his mind's eye, feel the stunned horror of it in the pit of his stomach. What had happened? He wanted to ask, but he suspected there was a high chance his throat wouldn't quite cooperate if he tried.

Besides, Obi-Wan was finally taking a sip of his tea, and Anakin didn't want to interrupt this. He watched carefully over the rim of his own mug.

When Obi-Wan looked up again, his eyes were wide.

"How is it?"

Slowly, Obi-Wan said, "It's amazing."

Anakin beamed from ear to ear.

"What's the secret? You put mu'nillan nectar in it? That sounds bizarre, but this tastes incredible."

"It's your favorite," Anakin explained. "I don't much care for it myself, but I perfected the formula because it's useful as hells when I need to wheedle you."

Obi-Wan's expression looked as though his brain was playing the word wheedle on a looping track in increasingly disdainful tones, but his only answer was to take another drink. They didn't say anything more for a moment, sipping their tea in a comfortable silence that fell between them as easily as ever. Easier than ever, Anakin thought, remembering the tumultuous last few months of his apprenticeship.

"Why would I forget that?" asked Obi-Wan finally, frowning as the thought occurred to him. "Why would I remember how to make tea in general, but forget my favorite way to doctor it?"

Anakin shrugged. "I don't know. Why would you forget your name, but remember which cupboard you like to put all the pots and pans in? That's a question for the healers." The way Obi-Wan snorted softly at that made Anakin narrow his eyes. "You have been to the healers?" Of course he shouldn't have assumed that his stubborn master would go to the healers voluntarily, even for something as significant as total retrograde amnesia.

"I don't know why you're giving me that look. Yes, I've been to the healers."

"So what did they..." Anakin trailed off as Obi-Wan turned to set his tea down. As he stretched out his arm, Anakin reached out and caught it. "Master," he breathed, tracing the silvery lines of scarring up Obi-Wan's arm with two fingertips. There were three of them, even and precise, starting at what looked like a burn-mark in the middle of his palm, stretching the whole length of his arm, and disappearing under his shirt. These couldn't have come from the explosion; they were far too exact - almost surgical.

Anakin's breath caught as he followed even further, past Obi-Wan's shirt and up the line of his neck. Obi-Wan was very still under his hands, allowing Anakin to find the places under his chin where darker scars showed old puncture wounds, and the thin lines that traced both sides of his jaw up until they disappeared under his hair. It was like the outline of something - something that had dug in all around Obi-Wan's face...

"A mask," Anakin said absently, and Obi-Wan flinched.

Suddenly, Anakin realized how tightly his left hand was gripping Obi-Wan's wrist - how his durasteel hand was cupping Obi-Wan's cheek. He jerked back, almost recoiling, holding his hands up in front of him. "Sorry- I'm sorry-"

"It's fine," said Obi-Wan for the second time. He contemplatively thumbed the line of fang-shaped scars under his chin. "There was... a mask."

Clearly, thinking about it wasn't very pleasant. "Can... can I ask what happened?"

Obi-Wan was looking at him that way again, like there was something he wanted but didn't know how to ask for. After a minute, he asked, "How exactly do we know each other?"

So that was a no, then. "We work together." That explanation was almost comical in its insufficiency. "Live together. I don't know. It's hard to explain."

He wracked his brain for something more complete to say. You raised me? We spent everyday together? We fought together? When I was little, you used to let me sleep with you when I had nightmares? How could he explain the all-encompassing knot of need and conflict and history and, well, attachment that bound him to Obi-Wan?

Obi-Wan was frowning at him, and Anakin desperately wished he could reach for his master in the Force to feel what he was thinking.

"Are we friends?"

Blinding relief, as Anakin suddenly discovered the one word he'd been missing. "Family."

Obi-Wan's frown faded, leaving behind something softer that Anakin didn't quite recognize. At last, he said slowly, "There was this... planet. Outer Rim planet - I don't know it's name, but it's the first thing I remember. There was a prison, and a mask, and... more." He turned his palms over, letting Anakin see the circular burn scars in the middle of each one. "I don't know why. I don't even know who did it to me. I just got out - stole a ship, and ran. Of course, I didn't know where I was running to."

Ventress, Anakin thought. He'd been captured, and all the time they'd just assumed he'd been killed. Where had Anakin been at the time? On Coruscant, going through the excruciating process of reassignment? Newly knighted, feeling utterly isolated? Christophsis, in over his head with a brand-new padawan and desperate to scrape a victory out of complete disaster? How long had Obi-Wan been held?

"I made it this far before I had a slight physical complication that prevented me from getting any further."

Anakin had to bite the inside of his cheek. "That means you collapsed."

A slight one-shouldered shrug was the only acknowledgement of that. "So I ended up forcibly seeing the healers for quite a while. Apparently, I was somehow infected with muscle maggots." Obi-Wan's voice was dry and matter-of-fact, but Anakin shuddered.

"Somehow," Anakin repeated incredulously. He had his fists clenched so tightly that his fingernails bit into his palms. The way Obi-Wan told it was plain and unadorned, but Anakin had been by his master's side through enough horrors that he didn't need any extra detail. Obi-Wan had been alone in the galaxy, confused and tortured and stripped of even his identity. He'd run and run and run until he physically couldn't anymore and the wasting weakness of Ventress's torture had stopped him in his tracks. He'd been alone, and where was Anakin?

"I'm sorry," he said, tight with anger and misery. "Obi-Wan, I'm so sorry."

"Anakin." Obi-Wan said his name easily, said his name like he'd always said it, and if Obi-Wan told him 'It's fine' one more time, Anakin was going to scream. "It wasn't your fault. You didn't know," he said, like he knew what he was talking about. Like Anakin was the one being ridiculous.

"I should have -" The words choked off.

He should have known. He'd been so wrapped up in himself, in his own journey, his own grief - that he hadn't even thought to wonder if perhaps Obi-Wan could have survived. He'd seen his master overcome so much, he should have known to look deeper than a single exploding tank.

But that was his own failure, and his guilt was his own. He didn't need to burden Obi-Wan with it too, especially when Obi-Wan didn't remember him.

"Anakin." Obi-Wan reached out to him, touched his shoulder just gently, and Anakin gritted his teeth with the effort of not reaching back. And then - "Anakin," he said again, in his chiding, who are you trying to fool, my padawan, tone. The year that separated Anakin from the lost, orphaned padawan he'd used to be melted away, and resistance was kriffing useless.

Anakin clutched at Obi-Wan, wrapping his master up in an embrace about half as tightly as he wanted to. He held him carefully, meaning to pull back after the quickest of squeezes, but Obi-Wan was returning the hug, arms tight around Anakin's back. There was no way Anakin was going to pull away, no way he could have. These were the arms that had held him as a terrified little boy, the hands that had covered his own, teaching him to hold a lightsaber for the first time, the body whose wounds he'd carefully tended countless times.

Home-like, Anakin had said. His earlier words came back to him as he huffed a watery laugh into Obi-Wan's hair. Right again, Skywalker.

"I should have looked," he said, hiding his face against Obi-Wan's neck. He didn't know how he would have done it, but he knew he should have. "I missed you."

"I think I missed you too," Obi-Wan whispered back.

Wordlessly, Anakin tightened his hold briefly before stepping back a little. Obi-Wan's hands rested on his shoulders, though, keeping him from going very far. "You don't remember me," Anakin pointed out with a slightly wobbly smile.

"No, not specifically." Obi-Wan's gaze was serious, eyes searching Anakin's face slowly. Anakin held his breath as one of Obi-Wan's hands stole up to brush a lock of hair off his forehead, tucking it behind his ear. "But I know that your face makes me happy. Like the answer to a question I didn't know to ask." Obi-Wan was looking at him that way again, thoughtfully letting the short curl behind Anakin's right ear slip between his thumb and forefinger.

Anakin had to close his eyes, squeezing them tightly shut against the irresistible prickling of tears.