Disclaimer: All recognisable characters are property of Lucasfilm. I make no monetary profit from this, nor do I intend to.

Part III: Wash Away The Ashes

By the time the speeder was fit for the return journey, it was nearly noon. Obi-Wan more than once caught himself wishing Anakin was available to help fix its sandblasted engines.

'Are you sure you won't want to be staying the night?' he asked as he helped her into the front seat. 'It will be dark by the time you get home.'

'Thank you, but it's best I be getting home, Ben,' she answered. 'Owen will be back before noon tomorrow.'

'If you're sure…' He paused. 'Wait here a moment.' He walked briskly inside, returning carrying a large bottle of water, which he hefted into the seat beside her. 'You really shouldn't be travelling in this heat, no matter how much more accustomed to it you are than I,' he observed with a small smile. 'Comm me when you get home.'

'Thank you, Ben, but I'm not a child,' she said, shifting Luke in her arms so she could start the engines.

He rested his forearm on the speeder's hull, feeling it vibrate beneath him, eager to be away across the desert sands. 'But I feel responsible for your safety.'

Beru looked at him, her eyes gentle. 'If you'll excuse me for being so bold,' she said quietly, 'you always feel far too much responsibility for far too many things, Ben.' With her free hand, she lightly pushed his arm off the speeder, and released the acceleration lever. Staring after her as the speeder dwindled into a dark fleck against the unsettled dunes, he realised that she had not even asked for his comlink number. And he wasn't sure himself if the blasted gadget still worked.

Sighing, he trudged back into the house to prepare his midday meal. He was just reaching for a jar of blue milk—he noted with some annoyance that it was almost empty, and he hadn't noticed until now—when he heard a faint tinkle cleave the fierce desert noon. For a moment, he was motionless, hands clenched on air in front of him. It had been, he thought, a year. Not so long, really; Force, it was such a short time. The simmering air still tasted bitter in his mouth. That sound did not belong here—it belonged in civilisation—

The holo-transponder Prince Organa had given him chimed again, its call insistent in its delicacy. He spent a long moment groping, gathering, weaving the lost, scattered threads of Obi-Wan Kenobi, and then strode to an alcove in the wall where the holo-transponder nestled, its distinctly Alderaanian design almost outrageously incongruous within its surroundings. Bail Organa appeared dressed in a pale tunic clasped with silver; small and blue and flickering in front of him, the transparent insubstantiality of his holographic image somehow at odds with Obi-Wan's memory of the tall, solidly imposing Senator.

'Captain Antilles.' Obi-Wan spoke without preamble, dispensing with formality for the coded names and signals they had agreed upon eleven months ago.

The Prince nodded in acknowledgement. 'Ben,' he returned. 'It gladdens me to see you in good health.' He paused, seeming to steel himself, and a flicker of surprise frissoned through Obi-Wan—he couldn't recall having seen Bail Organa ever nervous. But when he spoke, his voice was steady as though he addressed the Senate floor. 'Would you like to see her?'

Bail straightened his tunic, while Obi-Wan simply stood and stared. A slim handmaiden brought in the white bundle that was Leia Skywalker. From his spot upon the dusty floor, Obi-Wan could almost smell her baby frangrance. Padmé's daughter. Anakin's daughter. Luke, all over again: they were so different and yet always the same. Without thinking, without meaning to, an unsteady hand reached out and adjusted the holo-reciever until Bail stood large as life before him, Leia cradled in his arms. The cloud of brown hair, the impossibly large round eyes that were kaffe stirred with honey. Padmé's daughter.

'Leia…' Whose voice cries out? He was like Bail, he realised, like Bail. He could never be rational around children.

'Leia,' gasped Padmé, and the woman who had been Queen at the age of fourteen didn't have the strength to hold her newborn daughter. And Obi-Wan Kenobi carried Leia Skywalker beside her, filthy and bloodied as he was with Anakin's blood, when he had no place in this delivery room, when it should have been Anakin standing here, Anakin repeating his children's names, Anakin holding Padmé's hand as they came into the world, Anakin feeling pure joy at their birth, instead of this brief, dulled flush of life that was bleeding death all over the place.

It shouldn't be this way.

'Leia.'

Now he had seen both twins within a few hours of each other. The Force, he darkly mused, did indeed have a sense of humour. He was still staring into her round, serious, perfect face when Bail straightened. 'I have news.'

'Yes?' Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows, inwardly grasping for composure.

'Another of our runners,' said Bail cautiously, 'got into some trouble at the Jurre Cluster Field. The cargo won't be making it as early as you'd hoped, I'm afraid.' He stopped, his dark eyes compassionate as Obi-Wan absorbed his words.

Another fugitive Jedi had fallen, presumably at Darth's blade. Obi-Wan hoped not, although that possibility, he knew, was highly unlikely. The clones, or stormtroopers as they were now called, were not yet experienced enough for even a whole company to take on a wary Jedi. It always hurt. It still did. He stood and endured reality, and he knew it would be folly to enquire after the dead Jedi's name. He did not. He asked, instead, 'What do you want me to do about that? Captain?'

'Join us on our next flight, Ben. We need a good navigator like you.'

Obi-Wan hesitated. Then, 'No, I'm sorry.' His gaze shifted back from Bail's face to Leia's. Much lower, almost a whisper, he added, 'I don't like flying, you remember.'

He was a crazy old man. A crazy old man in the middle of nowhere. Hell was aflame behind him, but now he inhabited a lawless limbo of the lost, and he was alone. The desert burned like the searing kiss of lightsaber heat—ironically appropriate, he supposed. All those who live by the sword…His memory worked for the old Jedi aphorism as subtle emotions flitted across Bail's shuttered face, each attempting to find purchase.

'Captain Antilles. Take care.'

A warm flash of relief in Bail's eyes. 'You too, Ben.'

Obi-Wan barely acknowledged the concern in his friend's voice. He leaned forward, his jaw tightening. 'No, you take care. You must.'

Bail seemed a little taken aback, but his eyes told Obi-Wan that he had understood. 'Thank you for everything, Ben. Until next time.' He did not wait for Obi-Wan's reply. The hologram stretched out a translucent hand, and then flickered into nothingness.

'Take care,' Obi-Wan repeated softly. He turned to face the desert outside his door. This time of the day, it was a bleached cloth upon which the suns left no shadows, only scars. He wondered how Beru and Luke were faring.

Obi-Wan, do you remember Xanatos?

'Not at all. Who the kriff is Xanatos?' he muttered sarcastically under his breath. The Force was silent, seeming to be quietly exasperated at his persistent flippancy, and for a heartbeat he was reminded of so many tense moments he had experienced with Anakin, whose apprenticeship had often been nothing short of stormy. He resisted the urge to throw another childish temper tantrum. 'Don't you presume to understand,' he continued bitterly.

If his dead Master made any response to that, Obi-Wan did not hear it. 'He was my Padawan. Doesn't that mean anything?' His voice, very low, was an anguished plea. 'I wish it had been enough.

Love, his memory supplied, love is the answer.

'That is my poverty,' he whispered. He remembered a time when Qui-Gon had asked him Doesn't it comfort you, Padawan, to know that whatever else happens in the galaxy, there will always be trees? But here, here on Tatooine, there were no trees. Barren, the desert was ageless, and it neither listened nor spoke to him.

Chewing his lower lip thoughtfully—a habit he'd unconsciously picked up from Anakin—Obi-Wan decided to forego the blue milk for that day, settling instead on a couple of Corellian tubers.

He thought of Qui-Gon, of Xanatos and of Anakin, of pools of acid and pools of flame, of the all-consuming conflagration of darkness that always left such acrid ashes in its wake. Could he ever truly leave Mustafar? Walk on without looking back? Could he wash away the ashes, in this waterless place?

Obi-Wan put down the knife he had been using to slice the tubers. Love. Pure love. Love without attachment. Faith without dependency. Purity. Let me love all, and claim no one. Let me be nothing to myself, that I may be the purest vessel of Your will. Let me give without taking. Let me love without possessing. He touched the Force.

And a tree would blossom here, yes, here, in this desert, yes, it would. Force let it be. Love. That would be his own, personal, private Rebellion.