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Anakin should have recognized the screaming, but something in his mind refused to believe it was what he thought it was. It was like his brain had taken in the sound and warped it into something that didn’t match any of his memories.
By the time his boots turned in the right direction, there were already others thundering past him; robes landed on the ground by his leather covered toes and all he could do was stoop.
He picked up the cloak and stood.
His knees bent mechanically as they carried him to join the ring that had formed around the source of the sound.
Obi-Wan.
It was like the sound vanished entirely; there was only movement.
Master Windu dropped to his knees and clutched Obi-Wan. He crushed him. His hand clenched into fists as he compressed him as flat and as close to his own heart as a person could do with skin and ribs and cartilage covering that organ.
Obi-Wan shoved against his shoulders with palms that seemed to weaken as soon as they made impact. His forehead cracked against Master Windu’s collarbone but didn’t stay there. He tossed like an ox. Screamed.
That screaming. It was hoarse and higher-pitched than Obi-Wan’s voice. It was a mix of falsetto and agony and the sound of crushed glass digging into a windpipe.
Master Windu used his jaw to lock Obi-Wan’s head into place.
He held.
He held. Like he wasn’t even a little afraid.
Obi-Wan’s nose was pressed into the soft, vulnerable skin on Windu’s neck; after the initial writhing, his terrible movements slowed and he began to sag down further and further, until all that was left of him was the sweaty, oily shine of auburn hair.
Windu remained a stone master with a punishing grip. As sound returned to his ears, Anakin realized that he was speaking to Obi-Wan, tucked so closely against his ear that all Anakin could hear was a mumble.
“Obi-Wan?” Ahsoka’s voice asked at Anakin’s side. Skinny fingers began to dig into his ribs. “What’s wrong with him? Skyguy? What’s wrong with him?”
He should have recognized that sound.
Obi-Wan had screamed like that at Master Qui-Gon’s funeral, when everyone had walked away. When there had been a hand on the back of Anakin’s head, warm and insistent that he not look back. That he give Obi-Wan this single moment of privacy before everything changed.
Everything.
“Go back,” Anakin said. “Everyone go back.”
His master’s quarters were empty; Anakin’s fingers rubbed over each others’ knuckles in endless cycles. The heels of his boots were scuffed, but the longer he stared at them, knuckles growing more raw with each passing second, he found that emotions were hard to hold.
Obi-Wan had had an episode, Master Plo said.
This was not the first time he’d exploded like this, Master Plo said.
The carnage was nothing. No one was hurt. He’d just gotten claustrophobic. He’d be alright soon. He needed time and space away from people.
Away from Anakin and Ahsoka and the 212th, who he loved—all of them, who he loved and who loved him back. Claustrophobia was not an Obi-Wan-Trait. Anakin had watched him climb through sewers, hustle up maintenance ladders, hide in the sloped arches of roofs and rafters.
And yet everyone kept saying ‘claustrophobia,’ as if Obi-Wan had ever feared the dark.
They were all lying. Hiding.
It wasn’t just the others. It was the old guard who said this. Masters Fisto and Ti and Koon. Master Windu had yet to return from wherever he was. Wherever Obi-Wan was.
Anakin was Obi-Wan’s padawan.
Anakin was the closest thing Obi-Wan had to a son.
What rights did he have at all if he had none to take Obi-Wan’s hand and curl it into a moon that fit around his own?
Ahsoka sighed next to him.
“Go eat,” he said. “I’ll wait here.”
“You sure?”
He was sure.
He sent Ahsoka to bed. He took Commander Cody’s report alongside Rex’s. He transferred the data mechanically to the higher ranks from Obi-Wan’s datapad. He had to co-sign the clearance as his thumbprint wasn’t enough to send the files on its own.
The reports would hang in limbo into a higher ranking jedi approved them to go to the Chancellor.
Obi-Wan’s absence felt like a newly dug grave. Empty and gaping and dark and full and filling steadily with water.
A rustle brought Anakin away from picturing Obi-Wan’s burnt remains being laid heretically into the mud and buried by Master Windu’s mud-slick hands, one fistful of crunching wet soil at a time.
“Worry reminds us of ours and others’ mortality,” Master Plo said, leaning forward onto set knees.
Anakin swallowed.
He had no response nor interest in comfort or wisdom at the moment. He wanted Obi-Wan to open that heavy door over there. He wanted to hear him trying to come up with an excuse that Anakin wouldn’t hear, no matter what it was.
“Mace is looking after him, Young Skywalker,” Master Plo said.
“Why does he always get involved with us?” Anakin asked, not even angry enough to push past the hollowness.
“Mace?”
“Yeah,” Anakin said. “He—It—”
He was never fast enough. Windu blew past him like sleet and fog anytime even the littlest thing went wrong. He seldom looked at Anakin until he was done plucking and grousing at Obi-Wan for his so-called ‘idiotic’ behavior. Bitterness was the flavor of ‘idiotic’ behavior. Not once had Obi-Wan’s actions fit that description when Windu had accused him of it.
The crunch of soil was too loud in Anakin’s head for him to ignite the spark of indignity.
Master Plo’s rough hand curling around his neck and scraping the side of his cheek took Anakin by surprise. He jerked, but Plo wasn’t offended. His softer palms were warm.
“May I show you something?” he asked.
Anakin looked up into the eyes of his mask without lifting his chin and nodded.
The heat and scrape by his face disappeared. Master Plo dug through his pockets for his minipad. He started flicking through it once he found it. Anakin looked away from him to the still door and sucked in the first half of a sigh.
“Here we are.”
The pad was nudged into his arm and then set into his hands.
And before Anakin was a holo. An old one; unmoving and a little grainy, but not so bad that the clarity was too affected. He knew the people in it. He looked up to Master Plo with wide eyes.
“Is that Master Qui-Gon?” he asked, pointing.
Master Plo huffed a little chuckle.
“It is indeed. You’ll see that he cut his hair in his age. It used to be much longer.”
It was. And darker. It tumbled over his shoulders as he leaned forward to tuck his robed hands around the ribs of a young boy sitting cross-legged on the floor between him and a man who was just as familiar.
“Mace had just taken the plunge here and shaved off his braids,” Master Plo explained, pointing at Master Windu’s irate expression. One of his hands was clutched around the wrist of Master Qui-Gon’s. Its grip was tight enough that it collapsed the fabric around Master Qui-Gon’s bones and made deep indentations and wrinkles.
“Funny how you recognize them before your own master,” Master Plo said, gesturing to the central figure in the holo.
The boy.
He reached over Master Qui-Gon’s arm for the lid of a clay teapot on the short table between himself and Master Windu. Master Qui-Gon looked like he was about to pick him up under the armpits and move him back to safety.
Anakin didn’t recognize him through the babyfat in his cheeks. It was the eyes that did it. Obi-Wan’s eyes were hooded and clear blue. On stormy days, they turned silver. In Master Qui-Gon’s attempted rescue, they were just blue, though.
Just blue.
They were all so young.
“How old is he here?” Anakin asked.
“Who, Obi-Wan?”
“Yeah.”
“He is, oh, say, almost fourteen,” Master Plo said. “This is when things began to return to normal.”
“Normal from what?” Anakin asked as he tried to find a smile for this short, stubby Obi-Wan, trying, as always, to ‘just make a brew.’
Master Plo didn’t answer right away; his silence brought Anakin’s attention up to the side of his face. He found him staring off at nothing and no one, but in the direction of the door that Obi-Wan was supposed to walk through to save himself from the crunch of soil.
“Have you ever heard of Melida/Daan, Anakin?” he asked.
Anakin pursed his lips.
“The Times of the Cannibals,” he recited. “I remember.”
Master Plo huffed.
“A degrading name for a civil war,” he said.
That was all he said. He was waiting.
Teaching.
Anakin dropped his eyes to the holo and searched the image again. He realized that Master Windu’s hand was cupped underneath Obi-Wan’s outstretched one as if guiding him.
Teaching him.
Teaching him how to make tea.
“This was around then?” he asked.
“After,” Master Plo said.
“They went there?” Anakin asked.
“Two of them did, and one returned first.”
Anakin scanned the image and found that Master Qui-Gon’s apartment was of a slightly different set-up from the one that Obi-Wan had brought Anakin to. The kitchen was an open space with no door or walls around it; there was just a counter and Anakin could see over it to the burners set against the far wall. He followed that wall right and found a dip by the doorway where three sets of shoes sprawled; two pairs of boots, one pair of soft off-white indoor slippers. They were the smallest. They belonged to this little Obi-Wan.
There were only two cloaks hung on pegs above those boots, however.
“Where’s Obi-Wan’s cloak?” he asked.
“A good question,” Master Plo said. “He was not allowed out of the Temple at this time. He had to prove that he was able to regulate his behavior in a manner befitting someone of his rank.”
Anakin set the pad into his lap.
“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked.
Master Plo didn’t answer. He stared back.
“He was a shitty kid?” Anakin asked.
“Not shitty, no,” Master Plo said. “But excitable. Impulsive. Qui-Gon struggled with the strength of his personality a great deal, especially after Melida/Daan. He exhibited behaviors that one would expect from a child who had experienced that place, and Qui-Gon saw in them the apprentice before Obi-Wan and so took actions he believed would spare Obi-Wan and himself from reliving such a fate.”
Anakin slowly handed the pad back.
“There was an apprentice before Obi-Wan?” he asked.
Master Plo chuckled.
“You didn’t find Qui-Gon quite old when you met him?” he asked back.
Anakin hadn’t really thought about it if he was honest. His memories of Master Qui-Gon were hazy. They were memories of Obi-Wan in a way. In them, Master Qui-Gon was a means to an end. The man on Master Plo’s pad was a note in a history book, who Anakin had just happened to brush shoulders with.
“He was fun,” he said.
“Yes, that was one of his many personality traits on a good day,” Master Plo said. “He and Mace were quite close as children. They remained close, even as Mace began working his way towards the higher rungs of the Order and as Qui-Gon set himself to finding its sea floor.”
Anakin was seeing where this was going.
“Master Windu babysat Obi-Wan?” he asked.
Master Plo gave him a curious expression.
“Babysat is not the word I would use,” he said.
“I mean like, after the Time of the Cannibals,” Anakin said.
“You are misunderstanding,” Master Plo said. “The Times are not a marker of convenience, Anakin. Obi-Wan fought in those battles.”
No. There was no way. The Times of the Cannibals were unsuccessfully mediated by jedi. The module was taught as part of a course on diplomatic failure. If Obi-Wan was there, then he was the one who’d bungled the—
He was the one who’d—
He was thirteen years old in that holo.
“You are starting to understand,” Master Plo said.
“You—who—someone should have stopped him,” Anakin blathered. “How—did they get separated?”
Master Plo’s face sunk Anakin’s stomach like a wrecked ship off a misty coast.
“Excitable,” Master Plo said, tearing his gaze away. “Impulsive. Qui found him in one of the camps. Your master declined to return to the Order, however Qui-Gon, to his credit, did not make the same mistake twice. And unlike the other padawan who was lost, this one could be reasoned with. When they returned, they began anew and built a relationship on a footing far stronger than mutual convenience: on trust. I believe that Qui was surprised to find how strong he began to feel for Obi-Wan. Like a son, he never would have said, but we could all see it. He asked Mace to look after him should anything happen to him before Obi-Wan completed his training.”
Anakin’s lungs forgot how to compress.
“I happened,” he realized.
Master Plo sighed softly.
“The sith happened,” he said.
“No. No, I happened,” Anakin realized. “I ruined—I ruined his—their lives. They had all this before I got here and then, Obi-Wan had noth—”
“He has Mace,” Master Plo cut him off. “He has always had Mace. And so long as Mace lives, he will honor the promises that he’s made and those he’s made them to. That’s the sort of person he is, Anakin. Obi-Wan is safe. He may be dreaming of Melida/Daan now, but he knows that there are people who will bring him home. It is just a matter of waiting.”
There were more holos. Things that Anakin became obsessed with. Master Plo sent him a handful of his collection of times past, so Anakin could see for himself who Obi-Wan was before...just before.
He was so short in the holos that he barely cleared Master Qui-Gon’s sternum, which was to the old man’s advantage. He had his hands full—literally. In about a third of Master Plo’s holos, he was holding Obi-Wan by the scruff of the neck with a twinkle in his eye that said that he was only doing this because they were in polite company.
In one, he’d set Obi-Wan on his shoulders, which was probably the tallest Obi-Wan had ever and would ever be. Obi-Wan had wasted no time and climbing up to stand up on them, which Master Plo must have found humorous, but, judging from the shocked and alarmed faces of everyone else in the holo, brought only heartburn and anxiety to the extended jedi community.
Plo had a holo of Obi-Wan at twenty years old—just about Anakin’s age, looking sharp in the eyes and mischievous around the lips. He stood at Master Qui-Gon’s shoulder and looked over his shoulder with Master Qui-Gon’s hand at the small of his back, guiding him away from the edge of a rocky cliff face.
Anakin wondered if he’d had a history of jumping.
He wondered when Obi-Wan had lost his taste for thrills.
The adrenaline of watching your teacher, your master, your father murdered in front of your face probably did that to you.
Obi-Wan probably went in endless circles, dreaming of what may have happened if he was just a few seconds faster. Dreaming of blood on his hands. Dreaming of the Times of the Cannibals, when the old of a society had soaked the dirt with the blood of their own children.
After all that, Obi-Wan still strode onto a battlefield and lit his saber.
That had to be the thrill there.
It was probably the bomb that had set him off the day before. It wasn’t a big one, but it had sent balls of smoke and fire pouring through the openings of a field transporter; people weren’t fast enough to outrun it. There had been shrapnel that sounded like gunshorts.
Obi-Wan had thrown himself in its direction. Commander Cody said that he’d shouted a name no one recognized. They’d thought it was a trooper. It wasn’t. Anakin was sure that it wasn’t.
Ahsoka came over and laid down with him and asked him who was in the holos. He flopped over and let her sit on his back and lean on his shoulders to see them.
She said that these freaks were all so conservative. She pointed at their hair and laughed at how old-fashioned the cuts were. Anakin scolded her and said that he’d endured the Cut of Sexlessness, and if she didn’t mind her mouth, he’d buy a wig and impose it upon her as well. He asked her if she recognized anyone in the holos.
She asked him if they were historical figures.
Friends of his? Enemies? A league of ball players? Were they famous?
She didn’t recognize Obi-Wan at all. She pointed to Qui-Gon and asked if he was one of the statues outside the Temple.
Anakin explained that that was her great-grandmaster. She pointed to Obi-Wan and asked if he was Yoda’s master. Anakin said no. He’d only said one ‘great.’
Ahsoka got frustrated with him and stole his pad. She took it, pursued closely behind, and went to shove it into Rex’s face to ask him who he thought these people were. Rex had no idea.
No one knew.
No one could recognize Obi-Wan when Anakin wasn’t standing beside him. It was—
It was—
Sickening.
“Give me that,” he said, taking his pad back from Ahsoka. “Look. Listen. See him? Look at him. Really look. Who’s that?”
Ahsoka began to get frustrated with him. Rex saw this and cleared his throat.
“When was this taken, sir?” he asked.
Anakin wasn’t sure he was calm enough to count. He had to check twice before saying with confidence, “Fifteen years ago.”
That set off a lightbulb. Ahsoka shrieked now.
“That’s Master Kenobi,” She insisted, tapping repeatedly on the screen. “That’s him. That’s him.”
Rex’s eyebrows shot up.
“Guy was a looker,” he admitted. “Haircut aside. Did you know him then, sir?”
No. Anakin hadn’t. But he wished he did.
“His master did that to him? On purpose?” Ahsoka bemoaned at the holo. “No wonder his brain is stiff jelly.”
Anakin didn’t know what that meant, and he was choosing to ignore it.
“Hey,” he said. “Let’s do something for him. Something nice—no bugs.”
Ahsoka spun around and cocked her head. Anakin felt in his mind the exact same motion. He imagined the young man in the holo doing the same. Whipping around. Winking. Smirking.
One long jump and he’d be soaring off that cliff edge. Hopefully laughing. Hopefully leaving behind a long-suffering master who’d expected this the whole time.