Author's Note: Okay, we've finally got some rational Ani/Obi contact, Eruvyweth.
To Fragile Dreams: I'm so happy you enjoyed the last too chapters! I was worried I was overdoing it on the anger and angst, so I'm happy to hear you liked it. And I have to agree with you about the RotS novelization. I was starting to cry when I read it--unfortunately, I was reading it in class when I was supposed to be paying attention, so that was a bit awkward. Oops!
The OCs continue to have lives of their own. Oh well, I give up. I'll just let them do whatever they want.
Anyone notice where Onasi's name came from?
Six
"General Kenobi?"
I looked up from Anakin's unconscious form toward the girl medic.
She set her hands on her hips, and I winced as I felt another lecture coming on. "Do you realize that you're wavering on your feet even as you stand there? You're positively gray with exhaustion, General. Every time I look at you I'm surprised you haven't collapsed from it yet."
I shook my head, looking back at Anakin. "It doesn't matter. I'm fine."
She glared at me. "Do they teach all Jedi to be this self-sacrificing, or is it just you, Kenobi?"
"There are more important things to worry about right now, Healer Risto."
"You need rest!" she snapped, eyes flashing blue fire. "I don't care if there are more important things to worry about. I'm a Healer, and I'm concerned about the health of someone under my supervision. That's what I do. Do you think I want another patient on my hands? As if I didn't have enough to deal with already. Stars' end! I'll sedate you if there's no other way to get you to rest, General Kenobi."
"No need for such drastic measures," I assured her. "I'll get some rest soon enough."
"When? Once you collapse at my feet?"
"Hopefully before then," I replied, bracing myself against the wall again. She was right; I couldn't remember ever feeling so tired, and the desire to lean back and close my eyes—just for a moment—was almost unbearable.
"I'll keep an eye on him if you want to get some rest," she said, more gently. "There's no reason for you to stay—"
"Master Yoda told me to stay with him," I interrupted wearily.
"I can do that," she said. "Really. I am a qualified Healer, you know."
I took a deep, long breath and reminded myself that she was only trying to help me. "I need to stay," I said softly, looking down at Anakin's prone form. I couldn't leave him. What if he needed me?
I had already failed to be there for him when he needed me. I couldn't abandon him again. I laid my hand against the back of Anakin's neck as gently as I could, not wanting to hurt him but feeling that I needed to reach out to him somehow. His neck was one of the least badly burned parts of his skin I could see, and so seemed relatively safe to touch. His presence was dull and fogged, distanced from me and the rest of the galaxy by the drugs they had given him. Even the physical contact didn't strengthen our connection much, but I didn't want to take my hand away.
At least he wasn't awake to curse at me, to remind me of what he had become.
"What are you giving him?" I asked, trying to distract myself from the memory of his hate-filled eyes, his face twisted with fury and pain that had never belonged there.
"A mixture of level-three sedatives and several designed for Force-users," she answered hesitantly. "I hate to do it, but he's already proved he's dangerous, and it might protect him from whatever you were talking about if he's so far under he can barely feel the Force. I've done it before with badly injured Jedi."
The Healer was right, that might buy us some time—and we needed all the time we could get. Still, it made me ache inside to think of Anakin cut off from the Force like that. Even more than most Jedi, Anakin lived and breathed his connection to the mystical energy field that surrounded all things.
I brushed my fingers over the silky tendrils of hair curling against the back of Anakin's neck and took my hand away, intending to straighten up—
The next thing I knew everything was fading out into gray, and the world was spinning all around me. I blinked several times and only then realized that Healer Risto was supporting me with an arm around my waist. "Easy there, General," she said. "Don't push it."
"What—?" I started fuzzily.
She eased me down onto the side of Anakin's bed. "That's what happens when you don't pay attention to your body telling you to rest, tough guy."
I stared up at her in confusion. I had been absolutely exhausted before without passing out like this.
"How long have you been running on empty, anyway?" she asked, pressing her hand against my forehead. She bit her lip, then tugged slightly on my tunic. "I want to see you out of this."
"P-pardon?" I stammered, distracted from blearily searching my mind for the answer to her question.
She gave me a long-suffering look. "How am I supposed to examine you with a shirt on, General Kenobi?"
I could feel the tell-tale flush heating up my cheeks again. Siri had used to tease me about my modesty, saying that there was absolutely no reason for me to be uncomfortable disrobing in front of others.
But the fact remained that the last thing I wanted was to take off my tunic and sit in front of this young female medic half-naked. It was . . . it was humiliating.
"That's . . . not necessary," I said quickly.
Her eyes flashed gray-blue fire. "General Kenobi, in my presence alone you've been slammed up against a wall, choked with the Force, and grayed out from exhaustion. And I don't like the look of these tears and burn marks in your outer tunic, either. I'm going to examine you before you end up passing out at my feet. Either you take your tunic off, or I take it off for you, and you're too tired to stop me."
I opened my mouth to protest again, even though I knew she was right, but she interrupted me. "General Kenobi." She said it firmly, and then without even blinking laid her hands on my utility belt and started to unfasten it.
I shoved her hands away in what was not at all the dignified manner becoming a Jedi master. "I'll do it," I muttered absolutely gracelessly. I could feel my cheeks burning.
She smiled and stepped back. "I knew you'd see it my way."
"Who am I to argue with you?" I said sarcastically, shrugging unhappily out of my outer tunic. My other one followed it, and I was sitting on the edge of Anakin's medical bed and shivering slightly in the air of the room.
She laid her hands on my ribs first, pushing lightly, and her eyes narrowed as I sucked in my breath at the pain that spiked through me. "These are cracked," she said disapprovingly. "You told me you were all right."
I shrugged, then regretted it. "Nothing—ouch—broken."
She rolled her eyes again. "Jedi."
The rest of her examination passed quickly enough, though every minute I spent with her cool, professional touch skimming over my skin my blush deepened until my face felt positively radioactive. She smiled a little when she pulled away, and I ducked my head, humiliated by the embarrassment that had caused me. Most medical exams were done by droids, and that didn't bother me. Even the Jedi Healers bothered me, though I had learned to keep my embarrassment under control while they examined me.
I was just modest, I supposed. Incurably so.
"Well, not too bad," she said, and gave my cheek a light touch. "You can stop blushing, General. And you can put those back on." She nodded at the tunics in my lap, and I hastened to pull them back over my shoulders. "I have to file a report on the two of you," she told me, starting toward the door. "I'll be back soon enough."
I nodded. "I understand."
She grimaced. "When I come back, you're getting some rest, General Kenobi. Whether you like it or not." At the door she turned back around as it wooshed open. "General," she added, and gave my still only half-covered chest a very deliberate once-over. "Believe me—you've got nothing to be embarrassed over."
She was gone before I managed to snap my mouth closed, and I could feel my cheeks flaming again.
The woman was crazy, I told myself, steadying myself with one hand on the bed.
Totally crazy.
It was the dreams that finally brought him, shaking and terrified, out of the pain-filled red-streaked darkness that clung to him and blanketed his mind with fuzzy incomprehension. His mom was in them, but she was made out of fragile glass that shattered even as he reached eagerly to embrace her, the shards flying into his face, his arms, his chest and drawing blood that ran down his arms, stained his hands. And Padmé—but when he opened his arms to her she turned away, her tear-filled voice echoing in his ears, "Obi-Wan told me terrible things—terrible things—I don't know you anymore!"
And then there was Obi-Wan, looking at him with sadness, with grief and guilt and anger and pain and horror and resignation, and saying, "It's over, Anakin. I have the high ground." His face shifted into that of Palpatine, who called him Lord Vader and told him that Padmé was dead, and Obi-Wan was dead, and the Jedi were dead, and that it was all his fault, and told him, "Good, good. You are fulfilling your destiny." Anakin wanted to scream that it wasn't good, how could it be good, because everyone he cared about was dead, and he was the one who had killed them, but he couldn't because there was a black mask over his face and he couldn't breathe right and he couldn't scream—
He woke with a strangled sob that was swallowed by whatever it was over his mouth and nose that sucked his breath away, and he realized with a jolt of terror that he couldn't breathe, he couldn't—
"Easy." There was a gentle, calming hand on the back of his neck, rough with lightsaber calluses and scars, a familiar hand. "Take a deep breath. Relax. Don't fight it."
It was the last thing Anakin wanted to do, he wanted to fight and strain for air, but on some deep level he couldn't even put into thoughts he trusted the owner of that voice, and he so he obeyed, relaxed every muscle in his body with an effort and let his trembling body sink into the softness around him. After a moment the machine took over and his lungs expanded and filled with air and contracted to expel carbon dioxide, and he could breathe again as long as he didn't try taking a breath on his own.
That hand moved as if to stroke the back of his head and Anakin wanted it to, because that would be comforting and he needed comforting right then, but it stilled in mid-motion and pulled away from his neck.
He shivered in protest and raised his head, struggling to open his eyes and clear his vision, and his gaze fell on Obi-Wan, shoulders slumped and sandy-brown hair falling unruly into his eyes as it only ever did when he was too tired to sweep it back, sitting on the edge of the bed, and everything came rushing back at once. A red-hot wave of rage and pain and anger so intense it made the spot behind his eyes ache and his teeth go on edge roiled up from his belly and swept over him. "What . . . are you . . . doing here?" he growled, but it took a lot more effort and sounded a lot more pathetic than he wanted it to, and he was left gasping for air again until he remembered that he couldn't breathe unless he let the respirator take over. Anakin tried to relax and let it breathe for him, eyes narrowed to slits to watch the enemy sitting on the edge of the bed.
Obi-Wan looked sad and tired, and that only made him angrier. Obi-Wan had no right to look so forlorn while Anakin was so hurt and angry. But at the same time he wanted to make Obi-Wan hurt and grieve as much as Anakin did, some part of him deep down inside wanted to cheer him up and chase that sadness from his eyes, the weariness from his face. Anakin clamped down on that part of himself, gritting his teeth. He was Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith. Obi-Wan had betrayed him. Lied to him. It was Obi-Wan's fault he was lying here in such pain.
Obi-Wan's fault.
He felt nothing for him any longer, nothing except rage and hatred.
"I'm looking after you," Obi-Wan said, rubbing his forehead that way he did when he was getting a headache, and Anakin wanted to massage his shoulders and jolly him out of it the way he always did until he remembered that Obi-Wan was his enemy, and Obi-Wan had hurt him, and that Sith Lords didn't care about things like their enemies having headaches. No matter who that enemy had once been.
"Little late for that, Master," he rasped, and Vader relished the agony that twisted Obi-Wan's face, the defeat in the way his shoulders slumped a little more.
"It's never too late, Anakin," he whispered.
Those words unleashed a flood somewhere within Anakin-Vader's heart as if a dam had splintered into a thousand pieces. "Never too late?" he choked. "Never too late? It was too late for mom, wasn't it? It was too late for Qui-Gon!" That part of him that gloried in his newfound power felt a surge of satisfaction at seeing the raw pain flash across Obi-Wan's features. "And it's . . . too late for . . . me!"
The rush of angry words had taken all of his strength, and Anakin found himself choking and gasping for air again, unable to bring any into his tortured lungs. Obi-Wan caught and held him as he fought, one weathered hand on his cheek, the fingers in his hair, holding his head still, and murmured soothingly, telling him to relax as he massaged the back of his neck, thumb making little circles on his cheekbone until Anakin managed to force his body to relax and the machine caught again and he could breathe. Anakin hated him for his gentleness, his forgiveness, when anyone else, anyone normal, would have left him to struggle and fight for air.
"I hate you," he mumbled into the pillow beneath his head.
Obi-Wan took his hand away, and Anakin hated the part of himself that missed it, too. "I know," the Jedi Master said miserably. "I'm sorry, Anakin. I know I failed you. I don't know how, but I know—I did fail you."
That's right! Anakin wanted to scream. You failed me—you weren't there when I needed you, you hid the power of the Jedi from me when I needed it to save Padmé, you held me back and kept me from reaching my full potential, potential I could have used to save mom, save Padmé, save—all you cared about was the kriffing Council and what they kriffing wanted and I was never kriffing good enough, I never measured up, never competed with that—and . . . and all I wanted . . . was to make you notice me . . . make you . . . proud of me . . . . But in the end, I failed you. And why are you still saying it was you, you IDIOT!
Anakin buried his head in the pillow and tried to ignore the tears leaking out of his eyes and slipping down his cheeks, pooling on the plastic surface of the breath mask and making his face sloppy and wet and hot, soaking into the fabric beneath his face. He held his shoulders rigid to keep them from shaking and prayed that Obi-Wan would think he was asleep and leave him alone.
The last thing Darth Vader wanted was for Obi-Wan Kenobi to see him cry.
