Chapter 10 - I'm Sorry
Anakin heard the news by overhearing the other Masters.
"What the kark do you mean you lost him!?" Master Siri Tachi hissed at Quinlan.
"You try finding him! His shields are impossible," Quinlan shot back.
Ferus who was at Siri's side looked panicked when he caught sight of Anakin.
He started shaking his head at Anakin and began tugging on his Master's sleeve, "Master."
But Siri ignored him, "Obi-Wan Kenobi comes back from the dead and you lost him!?"
Anakin stopped breathing, he was pretty sure the entire planet stopped spinning.
Quinlan shook his head, "He wasn't okay, Siri, whatever happened, whatever he did, he isn't kriffing alright. You know how he is, you know how good he is at hiding his pain. He freaked in front of the Council. He back talked to the Council, to Mace and Yoda."
"Why?" Siri asked.
"I don't know! I don't know what the hells he did! But I know whose fault it is; Damn Jinn to the far reaches of the galaxy!"
"Obi-Wan is alive?" Anakin asked, finally finding his voice, inwardly flinching at the true hatred in Quinlan's tone for Master Qui-Gon.
The two adults spun on him, horror crossing their expressions when they realized he had over heard them.
Quinlan stepped up, "He's alive, Anakin, he's in the Temple."
I think, was implicit in his tone and expression.
"But he went to the Council before seeing me?" Anakin asked, wounds that had begun to heal tearing open.
"No!" Quinlan almost yelled before calming himself. "No, he was going back toward the apartments, I'm the one who dragged him before the Council."
"You should have dragged him to the healers," Siri sanpped.
"He was injured?" Anakin asked.
"Not physically," Quinlan said. "But I suspect he'll be grounded until the healers clear him."
Siri gave him a sharp look, "Obi-Wan always passes those stupid tests."
Quinlan shook his head, "He won't this time."
Anakin's gut twisted, "What happened? How did he disappear?"
"I don't know, he said it was something Qui-Gon taught him. Those two were always poorly matched, I don't know what crazy thing he learned from Jedha." Quinlan sighed, "But something went wrong that much is clear."
"Why hasn't he come to see me?" Anakin asked.
Ferus gave Anakin a pitying look that just twisted the blade deeper.
Quinlan knelt before Anakin, "He will come looking for you. I swear it, Padawan. Obi-Wan has left the Order before. If he came back like this, before he had himself put together, it was to see you."
Anakin stared at the Kiffar not knowing how to answer that.
Quinlan sighed, "I am not saying to not be upset with him, not when he's gone and done something self-sacrificing and self-destructive again. However, he does always have his reasons. I just ask that you be patient with him, Anakin, your opinion matters more to him than anyone else's."
Anakin shifted uncomfortably, he still couldn't feel anything inkling of the Jedi-Apprentice bond between him and Obi-Wan but aloud he said, "I'll try."
Quinlan pulled Anakin into a sudden hug, making him yelp, but sensing the man's worry, Anakin hugged him back.
"That's all we can ask of you," the Kiffar said thickly.
Anakin hugged him tighter, realizing for the first time that maybe Quinlan Vos had been more to Obi-Wan than just a friend.
Jedi Master Rael Aveross had a talent for burning bridges.
He made himself an outcast when he was first brought to the Temple, got chosen by one of the most powerful Masters in the order, and when he was knighted and chosen a Padawan of his own at which point a few short years later, everything had gone to hell.
She died.
That the choice had been saving her from her reckless behaviour or saving a cage full of smuggled children that the slavers would have just as soon killed as released was rather irrelevant.
Nim had been his charge, and he had failed her.
Things had gone hazy after that, and to say he made a galactic embarrassment to the Order by slaughtering a whole network of slavers, hunting them down with blatant lethality.
It was dark blauch that hadn't been hushed up.
On the plus side, the phrase 'If you kill the apprentice, be sure to kill the Master first,' had cycled back into public discourse.
But none of that mattered, the reality was that Nim was dead and it was his fault; that was a truth Rael could never escape.
So he was quite used to isolation. He was also used to the disdain for his coping mechanisms.
Finding that someone had been in his apartment, had drunk one of the better bottles of liquor, he had exactly one thought:
Good for them.
He went into his stock and found nothing else had been disturbed, so he took a bottle of his own and went to the sofa.
He enjoyed the peace between him, the liquor, and the datapad he was slowly working his way through writing up his report.
It slowly got less intelligible as he wrote but that was tomorrow's problem. For now, he was enjoying the mind-numbing work.
Right up until he heard something move behind.
Rael jumped out of his skin, thinking some type of animal had gotten in.
He spilled his drink and had his lightsaber lit as he flung the sofa to the side of the room with a Force push.
Rael might not have been among the Order's most reputable members, but he was among the top tear when it came to power, even drunk, which he wasn't close to being yet.
Regardless, moving the sofa had been a mistake because the intruder had been sound asleep, until he wasn't and then Rael found himself on the floor on his back with his own saber humming beneath his throat.
Rael blinked, "Obi-Wan?"
The man staring down at him did not look like the Knight he had last met a few years back.
His eyes were grey and he was… a void in the Force.
Not the shining star he had always been.
The bearded man deactivated the saber and jerked to his feet, "What the hell is wrong with you?"
That was definitely Obi-Wan's voice, if not his demeanour, which even at the boy's worst had always been agonisingly polite. "Excuse me, what the hell were you doing sleeping on my floor?"
Obi-Wan tossed him back his lightsaber before going back to his cabinet, pulling out another expensive bottle of spirits, something Dooku had given him once, knowing it would be beyond Rael's plebeian tastes.
"Not that you're not welcome to my stores, nephew, but aren't you supposed to be dead?"
Obi-Wan sighed, popping the cap and drinking straight from the bottle.
Dooku would have been horrified.
So would have Qui-Gon for that matter.
"I wouldn't have come back if I'd known. But I suppose my passing wasn't enough to make the holos."
Rael frowned at that, "You didn't know we buried you and you don't want to be here?"
Obi-Wan barked a laugh.
There was no humour to that sound, "No. But I had to be sure Anakin was okay, I owe him an explanation for my disappearance."
"You don't plan to stay?" Rael asked, growing more and more worried.
Obi-Wan took another swig of the fancy brandy, "No."
"And you don't think your Padawan will take that to heart?"
"Better than my name showing up in the holos dead, again." He sighed looking up at the ceiling, "Besides, I couldn't possibly fail him worse than I already have."
Rael snarled, "You're wrong."
Obi-Wan looked at him, there was no sympathy on his face no pity, "Death is natural. I saw the reports, saw the footage. She didn't listen to you, she rushed ahead, she tried to save others. Her death was a tragedy, but it was also a natural consequence of what a Jedi does."
"You think you could watch Anakin die and be okay?"
Obi-Wan looked at him, "And be okay? No. But could you have taken Nim down in a fight, if she went against the Republic? Could you stop her? Could you take her limbs off in a duel?"
"What?" Rael asked, voice soft with horror.
"Yoda told me I had to face him. I asked him, no, I begged him not to send me, but I was a good soldier. I went, I defeated him, I let him burn."
Rael stared at him, Obi-Wan wasn't seeing him anymore, wasn't seeing where he was anymore.
This wasn't Qui-Gon's over eager Padawan, this wasn't the proud Knight who pushed himself to the limits to be the best Jedi of their entire damned lineage.
No, this man was older.
Broken.
And drowning in sorrow.
"Why?" Rael asked.
Grey eyes snapped up to his, "Because Sifo-Dyas was right, the Jedi fell. Driven to the brink of extinction, a whisper of a myth from a bygone age. My Padawan led the charge, it was my Padawan that raided the Temple. I didn't just fail him, I failed everyone."
"Why tell me this?" Rael asked. "We were never close."
"No, you were too attached to your grief."
"So why tell me something that could get you and your Padawan knocked?"
"Because you'll never tell, because you have no one to tell. You knew Dooku had become a Sith and instead of warning anyone you let yourself be killed on a mission."
Rael frowned, "You didn't just have a vision, did you?"
Obi-Wan drank again before answering, popping the 'P', "Nope."
"I heard your death had something to do with Qui-Gon," Rael ventured.
"You could say that."
"What can I do?"
Obi-Wan looked at him, confused for the first time, "What?"
Rael huffed, "I might be a washed up old bastard, and I may have failed you in the past, kid, but that doesn't mean I won't help now if I can."
Obi-Wan looked away.
"How many sleeping pills did you take?"
"Six."
Rael let out a sigh of relief, glad that Obi-Wan remembered. Rum and sleeping meds were not a great combination, however, Obi-Wan's biology wasn't fully human and Jedi, in general, were less susceptible to overdosing.
Rael would know.
"What can I do?" he repeated.
"Why didn't you tell the Council about Dooku?" Obi-Wan asked.
Rael shrugged, "Dooku has always been obsessed with the Sith. His falling from the Light… He has been falling since the day Qui-Gon nearly died on a mission when he was still a Padawan. He fell sometime after Galidaan, after his Padawan Komari Vosa forced his hand against her. The Council knows all that. They will never believe that he would ever raise a hand against the Order itself."
"They are wrong," Obi-Wan said with finality and disgust.
Rael shook head, crossed the space between them and took the brandy from the younger man's hand. "I watched Master Sifo-Dyas shatter. I heard his predictions that the Order would fall, that Republic would fall with it, and that the galaxy would descend into civil war. I watched his sanity snap when no one listened to him, so tell me what I can do."
"Dooku will announce war on the Republic."
"Dooku is a formidable opponent, however, the Separatist movement will not fade in his absence."
Obi-Wan was a bit taller than Rael, though not by much and leaning against the counter as he was, they were eye level.
"The Jedi need to change, I need to shake them, and I don't know how."
"You wish to leave?" Rael asked.
"I will always be a Jedi," Obi-Wan said. "But I am needed elsewhere. The Republic is not my home and I cannot abide by their compliance any longer."
Rael stared at him, "Play the part."
"What?" Obi-Wan asked.
"Tell your Padawan the truth, whatever the truth is. Tell him why you are leaving. But otherwise, be the perfect Jedi you alone out of lineage were the one to fit Yoda's ideal Jedi, and then leave. Not quietly, make a spectacle of it."
"That's your advice? Make spectacle."
"My real advice is to not take responsibility for the galaxy, but I know that's like asking water not to be wet. So yes, make a spectacle. Embarrass the Council and be honest with your Padawan."
Obi-Wan looked away.
Cautiously, Rael reached out a hand.
Obi-Wan didn't pull back.
Rael touched his arm and moving slowly, deliberately, he leaned into the younger man for a tentative embrace.
Rael said the only thing he could think of in not just watching Nim die but being the one to kill her, "I could not have survived."
Obi-Wan hugged him back.
"Qui-Gon never deserved you," Rael said, holding the other man close.
"I know something you can do," Obi-Wan said after a time. "Do you remember Ky Narec?"
Rael pulled back, "Sure, he was Qui-Gon's age, he wanted to be chosen by Dooku."
"You'll have to leave the Order," he warned.
Rael tilted his head, "You don't do things by halves, do you?"
Obi-Wan didn't crack a smile, "We act now, or all will be lost. We cannot make the same mistakes."
Rael shook his head, "I don't understand, but I don't need to. I trust you, Obi-Wan."
Obi-Wan frowned, "Why?"
"Because I believed Sifo-Dyas and you're the only one who sees what my Master has become. I will not repay that with mistrust."
"Thank you."
Rael laid a hand on Obi-Wan's shoulder, "What did Qui-Gon do to you?"
Obi-Wan's smile then was wistful, "He broke my reflection."
Obi-Wan used Rael's refresher to take a shower and brush his teeth. The mouth wash he had effectively disguised the spirits that might have lingered on his breath.
He didn't know why Rael's unfaltering support mattered nor how he was able to pull himself together.
Or at least shove the crap down and out of sight.
That lasted about as long as it took for him to find Anakin.
He found his young Padawan sitting outside their old apartment, Master Ali-Alann sitting beside him.
For a moment the world around him seemed to bend, and Obi-Wan would have sworn it was Luke.
Luke, in the Temple, on Coruscant.
Panic flooded him.
But then Anakin looked up with wide blue eyes and Obi-Wan was brought back to the present moment. He was all set to apologize, but Anakin beat him to it.
"Obi-Wan! I sorry! I didn't mean it!"
Obi-Wan frowned down at the child, "Didn't mean what, Anakin?"
"I don't hate you! I don't want you to be Master Qui-Gon, and I didn't mean it when I said I wished you weren't my Master! I didn't mean it!"
Obi-Wan blinked, remembering what he had been meditating on before he time travelled. Is that where he had been pulled from? Had his younger self's consciousness been absorbed by his older self as his younger body had replaced his older one on Tatooine?
Anakin's anxiety increased every moment Obi-Wan didn't speak.
But Obi-Wan didn't know what to say to an apologetic Anakin.
"Please, Master, I'm sorry."
Obi-Wan swallowed hard, reaching into his pocket for what he carried with him since leaving Tatooine. He handed the communicator to Anakin. "I'm sorry too, Anakin. I never meant to hurt you or fake my death."
Anakin took the communicator and said again, "I'm sorry."
Still, Obi-Wan didn't know what to say.
Master Ali-Alann cleared his throat, "Anakin has been staying with me in your absence, Obi-Wan. Until the healers clear you, I think it would be best if Anakin not move back in with you just right."
Obi-Wan fought not to let the relief show on his face. Even as he nodded, he asked, "Is that what you would like, Padawan Anakin?"
Anakin bit his lip but nodded cautiously, "I— I, yes, but just for now! Until you're better… Are you okay?"
Obi-Wan had been so ready for accusations, he was far less ready to confront the Anakin he had first met before Qui-Gon's death. Taking both Dooku and Rael's advice, Obi-Wan answered honestly, "No, but I will be."
Because he would have to be.
Anakin hesitated, then launched himself forward, and Obi-Wan knelt to catch him in that flying hug.
"Thank you," Anakin whispered without pulling away.
Surprised, Obi-Wan asked, "For what?"
"For coming back."
Obi-Wan hugged him tight, "I'm sorry, ner vod'ika."
I'm sorry for everything.
Anakin didn't let go, didn't yell at him, and didn't rage.
It should have been enough for Obi-Wan to have hope for the future.
But Obi-Wan had lost Anakin once, and then he had Luke.
Hope was too distant a promise to count on.
AN: Thoughts, pangolins, or feedback, pretty please?