Part 1
Author's Note: This is basically a time travel AU of the 5th Jedi Quest book. I'm going to try explaining everything so it will make sense even if you didn't read it, though. :D
But just as an initial warning, this is Obi-Wan's POV of what happened and you're gonna have to wait until later to finally understand Anakin's side. Basically, I was so upset at Obi-Wan for how mean he was being, I thought I'd make him brood about it for ten years post-ROTS and then send him back in time to decide to be a little nicer this time around. :3
~ Tirana Sorki
Obi-Wan's been on Tatooine for ten years now and still the emptiness of it doesn't fade. It's a constant of his life he's grown to tolerate by now because he can't do anything else but that doesn't mean it ever stops. Maybe he's only thinking about it now so obsessively because of the inquisitors he saw in the town earlier.
They were former Jedi, after all. And hunting a Jedi who's allegedly on planet. Hopefully not him. He's been so careful.
There's sudden movement in the sand in front of him, which he still catches despite the darkness and stops cold.
"Master," a voice calls. It's unfamiliar but no one would call him that if it weren't a Jedi. He turns to see the person in question. Not someone familiar but he'd hardly remember any of the Jedi. This is the first real, living one he's seen in ten years. Could be the last of three alive, for all he knows. He didn't know what he'd feel the next time he saw one. All he knows is that he doesn't – want to see one. Not now. Not – It brings up too much of the past when it'll never be anything but the past again. It won't matter that Luke might grow up someday and kill the Sith. Because it won't change that the life he lost isn't coming back.
"I thought I saw you in the town, but I wasn't sure. I didn't think you'd survived," the person goes on, approaching.
"You're making some kind of mistake," Obi-Wan replies curtly.
"I'm sorry, my name is Nari. Um, there's no mistake," he protests. He pulls out his lightsaber, glinting in the baring visible starlight.
The last time he held one of those was before he buried his and Anakin's lightsabers in the sand far away, forever side by side like he once thought they would be. And the last time he used one was –
He frankly doesn't want to have to use one ever again. "You're looking for somebody else." He's here for a Jedi Master who as truthfully as long gone as Anakin himself.
"What are you doing here, Obi-Wan?" Nari asks, desperation leaking into his voice.
"My name is Ben." He hasn't heard the name Obi-Wan in so long. That person, the Jedi Nari is here for, is long gone. Burned to ashes as much as Anakin was.
"Come on, please. Please. You have no idea what I've been through."
He wouldn't have hesitated to help him once. Now, he just –
His help has never been what anyone needs. He can't quite bring himself to say nothing more, though. "You must leave," Obi-Wan orders, "You'll draw too much attention."
"But I have nowhere to go. They're hunting me. You have to help me."
"You want my help?" he asks, gesturing to his lightsaber, "Take this. Walk into the middle of the desert and bury it in the ground. Stay hidden. Live a normal life." That's the most he can offer him. The most there is left for anyone anymore. That's all he has to – if a single day of his existence without the boy who was once his light can be called a normal life.
"What about the people that need us? What about the fight?" Nari demands.
The fight that burned his heart to ash long ago?
The fight that took Anakin from him?
The fight that led him to make the choice to leave Anakin behind the way he did?
The fight that made Anakin turn on the Jedi in the first place?
It's not something he wants a part of anymore, not as though there's anything left in this galaxy to fight for.
"The fight is done. We lost." Obi-Wan turns away, climbing back on his eeopie.
"What happened to you? You were once a great Jedi." He sounds incredulous now.
Once.
Long ago.
Before being a Jedi destroyed the one thing that he never realized was more important to him – even while it shouldn't have been – and now it's something he can never get back. No amount of ceaseless, desperate wishing that he could redo half his life or at least that day is ever going to change it. Nor will it ever do a thing to ward off the endless guilt tearing what's left of his heart to shreds "The time of the Jedi is over."
How he'll train Luke when the time comes, he doesn't even know. He goes to watch him every day almost but now that he's older, it's becoming steadily harder. He looks too much like Anakin did when he first became a padawan now, and that's all Obi-Wan can ever remember whenever he sees him.
"Go back to the town. Let it go."
That's what the Jedi way themselves teach. But Obi-Wan can never do that, especially not at the time when he needs to do it the most. But he can't call himself a Jedi anymore. He hasn't been one in ten years. He doesn't think he knows how to be anymore.
Nari doesn't say anything more, as Obi-Wan turns to leave.
Walking away without looking back, just the way he did the last time someone needed his help the most.
He's beginning to think that's the only thing he's good at.
The guilt gnaws inside of him suddenly, tight and crushing. He still doesn't look back.
**w**
Obi-Wan never makes it back to his cave. He hasn't felt the Force in ten years but he still feels the wild pulsing and shifting in the Force before he's suddenly being thrown through time.
It takes him an insane length of time to actually come to that conclusion.
But suddenly, instead of being on Tatooine, he's back on Coruscant, he's standing back in the Jedi Temple.
And the Jedi are suddenly alive again.
And – he's half convinced he's in a dream at first. But he knows this is real.
He's back in the past. All those years of wanting and now he suddenly has it, out of literally nowhere. The Force is settling out around him and he has the distinct feeling way inside that this sudden trip to the past is, in fact, permanent.
It takes him even longer to figure out what point in time he's in. The galaxy still carries the light and lack of chaos that it did before the war.
He's over fifteen years in the past, actually, and... Anakin is still his padawan. He should be sixteen right now. But most of all, he's alive. It doesn't seem possible. It's not because he's spent the last ten years grieving him and the only life he's ever known and now it's suddenly all back as though it weren't ever gone, not as though that begins to say anything about how he could lose it all over again.
Hesitantly, tentatively, Obi-Wan tries to reach into the Force for the first time in so long. The brilliant star of a Force presence that always burns as bright as a sun is there. More youthful than Obi-Wan remembers it being at the end but it's there.
Anakin is alive.
He's still his padawan and Obi-Wan could go to see him again right now and –
There has never been a moment in his life that he was happier and yet he's also never been so... afraid. He can hardly even imagine seeing him again, after spending so long believing he never would again. And he can't imagine... raising him again.
All these years, he's wanted a second chance to do it over again. He has that now, technically, even if Anakin is only going to be his padawan for more than three years. But after all the years he spent wondering where he went wrong, what even caused their relationship to fall so far, and he still doesn't have any more answers than he did before. He's still so lost. He doesn't even know where he'd begin in – anything.
But –
Anakin is alive and right now, that's about all his mind can keep coming back too.
**w**
It takes Obi-Wan a substantially embarrassingly long time longer to even begin remembering what's happening at this point in time. They're in the middle of a mission right now and the details of many of the missions they went on when Anakin was a padawan have hazed over in his mind a bit but this one is one of the ones that stands out.
Thankfully, or he would really have a problem.
It was an undercover mission.
Anakin and Ferus Olin were to disguise themselves as students and infiltrate an upper-class school on the planet of Andara.
A Senator's son had gone missing at the school and considering that there were also rumors of a squad of teens who'd become mercenaries that were also allegedly operating out of the school, the Council had thought an infiltration would be the best way to figure out what happened. Obi-Wan had bene working on the Senate side for more information from the Senator itself. In the end, it had been the Senator's son himself who staged the kidnapping, trying to overthrow his father and get back at him for something Obi-Wan didn't really understand. But that was never the part of the mission that stuck out to him the most.
It was...
Maybe it was that he'd heard out of nowhere, from Siri of all people, that Ferus had gone missing and he didn't understand why Anakin never contacted him using their emergency channels to warn him about it. Maybe it was because years later, after the Jedi fall, he'd thought back to that mission and began to wonder when Anakin's feelings against the Jedi had actually started.
Maybe it was that at the same time, instead of investigating Ferus's disappearance, Anakin had been with the mercenary gang and had told Ferus that he was going to participate in their fighter attack on a planet. Which was inevitably going to start a war there, even if he may not have been aware of that at the time.
Obi-Wan never understood the full details.
To be fair, he never did ask Anakin to explain what happened.
He only heard Ferus' and Siri's sides of the story.
All he knew was that for some reason, Anakin was acting as though he trusted these mercenary group of teens when he should have known well that he could not. And Obi-Wan had wondered if his constant rivalry with Ferus had something to do with the foolish decisions he'd been making then. A Jedi disappearing is a crucial matter for the Council to be notified about and he didn't understand why Anakin didn't do that.
Maybe it's also that part of what stuck out to him the most, what bothered him for years later was Anakin's miserable "I just wanted to make you proud" after their argument at the end of the mission. He... hadn't known what to say to him then. If he should tell him that he already was and always had been proud of him or not, when he'd been so disappointed at the time. But he couldn't stop thinking about it for a long time afterwards.
Anakin had been broody and withdrawn for weeks after coming back to the Temple.
Considering that he'd been formally reprimanded by the Council on his return, that wasn't really surprising.
But even before the galaxy fell to pieces, Obi-Wan had wondered for years about – that. Wishing he'd handled it differently. Looking back, it always felt like that was one of the main incidents that had driven an increasingly larger wedge between them – until by the time a few years later, that Anakin was nearly ready to be a Knight, it felt like they were constantly squabbling.
Sometimes, he has no idea how things fell so far in the first place.
"I hate you!"
The moment flickers through his mind again, uncalled for.
It's probably unfair how much that ceaselessly haunts him, because how could Anakin have felt anything else at the end, after – what he just did.
But then he wondered constantly, if the bitterness he knows Anakin felt towards him at the end of his padawanship actually faded when he became a Knight or if Obi-Wan just stopped noticing it. It's been so many years now, he doesn't remember it clearly. Doesn't remember... a lot of things.
Except Anakin's cheerfulness and light when he was much younger, and –
How much those words hurt, considering there has never been anyone he loved more. He should have told him that long before the end. But that would never have been the Jedi way. And that –
He needs to focus on the situation at hand.
And now he's back here in the middle of that mess.
He can't help wondering if that – if there's some reason it was this incident that the Force sent him back to.
Thinking back to before, he remembers in the weeks Anakin had been gone undercover, he'd missed Anakin far more than he expected he would. They talked early every night over comm but it had been... different. But really, back then, he had no idea what it was like to truly miss Anakin, Like a piece of himself that's forever lost.
He probably deserves to feel like that forever. It's not like Anakin felt any less in his last moments.
**w**
Obi-Wan remembers enough of the mission before to know that he needs to go to Andara now, to stop the situation before it gets too far – just like before. Which requires going to meet up with Siri.
He hasn't seen her in years. He should feel something more at seeing her alive again. And he does – there was so much of their childhood that they shared together and it's been so long since he saw a single familiar face. It... means a lot to see her again.
But she's not the one he's agonized over every moment for the last ten years.
Siri's about as feral as she was last time about Ferus disappearing and Obi-Wan never calling her.
Oops.
But well, he's a bit distracted with the time-travel and she keeps shooting him weird looks but he's too distracted to give it much thought.
All that matters is getting to Anakin.
**w**
Ferus was kidnapped by the head of the mercenary group – the Senator's son himself – and he's hidden in a lower part of the school. They find him there, the same as before, and take off to where Anakin should be about to fight the mercenary group now. They were going to kill him last time, planning use the body to claim that the Senator had his own son killed. Something to ruin the Senator's name.
Seriously, politics.
The one thing Obi-Wan never missed in all the years he was on Tatooine was finally having a break from some of that insanity.
He would have preferred more if that weren't only the case because the Senate decided that the ones who kept the galaxy stable for so long were actually the problem, though.
The sound of blaster fire reaches Obi-Wan's ears as they move quickly through the halls. Just like before.
He throws the door open, entering the hanger the mercenary group was going to meet up at.
And there, in the center of the room is Anakin.
Alive and breathing and so much more youthful, but still every bit him.
Alive.
For a moment, Obi-Wan can hardly breathe at the sight of him.
Anakin's blue lightsaber is flashing, moving with a grace that only Anakin ever mastered. Moving with the same skill that let him take down so many Jedi at the Temple. For a moment, all Obi-Wan can remember is that, but then he's refocusing on the child in front of him, who takes down every single of the ten attack droids with ease and all six people without hurting them, without needing even the slightest bit of help.
The Force flows through him like the flames of a star. Obi-Wan forgot what it was like to sense – the sheer power and brilliance that Anakin radiates. He forgot how addicting it used to be. He doesn't know how he's survived a single second without it.
Anakin's here.
Alive.
Siri and Ferus move forwards to arrest everyone involved – they did just try to kill Anakin, after all. Not to mention faking a kidnapping.
Obi-Wan also killed Anakin.
And then they're ushering them out of the room, leaving the two of them alone.
Anakin is looking at him now, the look in his eyes desperate for approval.
And Obi-Wan remembers a bit too painfully clearly how that ended for him... last time.
There's so many things he could say to him.
He remembers last time, he had been proud of the strength Anakin had shown in the fight but also well aware of how this kind of power was why Anakin needed to learn to be the best Jedi, with constant control. He can see even more clearly why now. Why all the Jedi always – pressed for that.
And yet –
Right now, the only thing in all the galaxy that matters to him is that his child is alive.
Obi-Wan crosses the hanger, pulling him into a crushing hug. Anakin freezes for a moment, but his arms slowly lift to hug him back. "Master?" Anakin half-squeaks, sounding totally befuddled and lost.
He wants to cry.
He hasn't felt an urge this strongly since Mustafar itself.
"What – ?"
"You did well," Obi-Wan tells him, very reluctantly pulling back, keeping his hands on his shoulders. He never wants to let go. He hasn't been able to touch him in so long. He hasn't touched anyone in so long.
Anakin's smile is shy and almost disbelieving.
He forgot how adorable he used to be when he was younger.
"But we should go," Obi-Wan adds, throwing another final glance around the hanger. He guides Anakin away, hand still on his shoulder.
He really needs to talk to him. He also has no idea where to start or what to say or – anything. Right now, he just cares that he's alive and with him again, and that truthfully matters more than anything that went wrong on this mission ever could.
But if he's going to be training Anakin again, he... has three years left to do it right. He doesn't think he could begin to trust himself to do that but he can't lose Anakin all over again. He can't. And now that he's seeing him again, he doesn't think there's anything that terrifies him more. He's almost afraid to accept that he really has him back, that Anakin's not about to disappear the moment he looks away.
He needs to take this one step at a time – but he doesn't even know what that means.
Not when he doesn't know where all he went wrong in the first place. He doesn't even know what all it was that made Anakin turn on the Jedi and he's never going to.
But...
His gaze shifts to the boy at his side and it only occurs to him right now that if there's something wrong between them, that's already started way back now, he could just... ask Anakin. It should give him insight, if nothing else. But that's something he has absolutely no idea how to do.
Especially not when every time Obi-Wan looks at him, all he can remember are his agonized screams as he walked away.
**w**
They're flying back to Coruscant in the same ship as Siri and Ferus, so it takes a while before Obi-Wan finally manages to find a moment alone with Anakin. The boy keeps glancing over at him, something nervous and uncertain in his eyes.
"What?" Obi-Wan asks finally. It's as good a way to start a conversation as any, anyway.
"I thought you would be angry," Anakin says finally, hand twisting in front of him, not really looking up.
The ever-present guilt in his heart spikes sharply.
He doesn't know how to handle this. This happened years ago for him. Even if he were angry, that's far from his biggest concern anymore.
"What matters to me most is that you're alive, Anakin," Obi-Wan replies firmly.
"I wasn't that close to dying, Master," Anakin objects, "I've faced worse."
Like when I left you to burn?
"Believe me, Anakin. I know."
The guilt is nearly strong enough to choke him suddenly.
The boy's looking at him a bit oddly. Maybe he's sensing it.
"What's done is done, Anakin," Obi-Wan goes on finally, "But... I would like to know what happened."
Anakin avoids his gaze the way he always used to when they were discussing something difficult. "It took me a while to realize Ferus was missing and after I realized, I didn't know where to start. I thought if I stayed under cover as a friend of the group, they would trust me enough to let me in on what was happening. That maybe I could find Ferus and Gillam at the same time."
Gillam – Right. That was the name of the Senator's son.
"And the airstrike?" Obi-Wan asks, because that's the part he really doesn't get.
"I didn't know they were going to actually hurt anyone at first," Anakin says, "At first they told me they were just going to fly into the planet's airspace as a sort of show of their strength. They were trying to make a corrupt Senator agree to negotiate. I didn't think it would start a war or – go nearly as far as it did. And I thought – I know I was wrong but I thought they were doing the right thing."
Obi-Wan can feel his shame curling into the Force, but mostly his fear. Afraid of what reaction he's about to face. Fairly enough.
What he did did break countless Jedi rules. Especially making that kind of decision on his own without the Council's permission or Obi-Wan's.
And yet, he can also understand that Anakin is still a child at this age and foolish mistakes will happen sometimes. After years of being away, he can see that youthfulness even more clearly. Maybe it's just that Obi-Wan himself is so much older now. Once, they were only sixteen years apart. Now it's more like thirty.
He has no idea when Anakin's breaking the Jedi rules went so far as it did in the future. He never asked what happened when he went to Mustafar either.
"You made a mistake," Obi-Wan tells him finally, reaching to lay a hand on Anakin's shoulder, "What is important is that you learn from it."
Anakin nods, sighing quietly. "Once I realized what they were really going to," he goes on hesitantly, "I knew I had to go to try to stop them. I was sabotaging their fighters so they couldn't take off when the found me."
He... hadn't actually known that either. "Clever."
He pauses. Considering. "The mercenary gang was already under watch by the Council. Didn't you take that into consideration?"
"Yes, but... they didn't seem that way when I met them. I thought they really wanted to help people. Some of them did. I thought it was... a little like the Jedi." There's something else Anakin isn't saying. Obi-Wan's almost certain of it but he doesn't really know how to prod for it.
Anakin looks up after a pause. "Is Marit going to be okay, Master?"
Marit?
Who's that?
...right. She was one of the mercenary members, the one whom Anakin had befriended the most personally.
"She was trying to kill you, Anakin."
Not like Obi-Wan's one to talk.
"Her friends tried to kill me," Anakin corrects, "She didn't want to do it. She just didn't know how to stop them. And she really believed in what she was doing. That it was going to help people and make actual changes in the galaxy."
These feel like problems from so long ago for him but they're present problems again because he's living in the past. It feels like his mind is still trapped in the future. "If she didn't do anything as wrong as the rest, I'm sure the Senate will take that into consideration when they make their case to them."
Anakin nods, falling silent again.
There's definitely still something else bothering him. Something that's clearly not entirely related to getting yelled at, unlike last time.
"Is everything alright?" Obi-Wan queries finally.
"I – " He hesitates. "Yes. I just really thought they were genuine."
"You're young still," Obi-Wan replies finally, "It's understandable that you make that mistake."
Anakin eyes him uncertainly.
"Master?" he asks finally, "Are you... alright?" There's worry burning in his eyes – Obi-Wan's missed seeing that on him.
But he doesn't even know what to say to that. Even if he shouldn't be surprised Anakin already noticed. It makes his anxiety suddenly spike though because he's not ready for that conversation. What should he even say to Anakin?
How much should he actually tell him?
How much can he even tell him?
The look in Anakin's eyes is so open and trusting and worried. And the only future Obi-Wan has to tell him is you failed as a Jedi in the worst way possible and then I gave you the most agonizing death there is for it.
Merely seeing the trusting look in his child's face right now is making him sick. He doesn't – deserve that.
"You just feel... I don't know. Different?" Anakin adds.
He's still half cut off from the Force. That would probably be why. "Something... came up," Obi-Wan answers after a long pause, "We can speak of this when we get back to the Temple."
Mostly, he's just trying to buy himself some time because he doesn't even know what how much he should say or – anything. He needs to think about it first. He's still coming to terms with the fact that Anakin is still alive.
His padawan looks like he's bursting with curiosity but he doesn't say anything more.
Final Notes: Reviews are always appreciated! ^-^
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