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Anakin’s skin soaked up the droplets of rain that fell over it like the ever hungry soil of the desert.
As a children, he learned that rainfall was a dangerous, unpredictable thing. Tatooine never saw rain more than once in a year, but every time it did it was a wild, untamed thing—all-powerful, the noise deafened everything else, to the point Anakin could barely hear his mother ordering him to get away from the window. Sometimes, when he was feeling courageous, he would stick his arm out, risking a sermon just to feel that weird, funny sensation of being wet.
Never, in his homeland, he had seen rain such as this: long-lasting, thin, almost peaceful. It was the last day of the 501st battalion on Gondra, and the planet decided to bid them farewell in the form of a drizzle. And, while Rex and the clones complained how bothersome it would be for them to move the cargo inside the shuttles, Anakin slipped away into the surrounding woods, wandering around until he found a clearing wide enough for him to sit down and let himself feel it; his mouth open just enough he could learn what water tasted like, when it fell from the skies.
That was how Obi-Wan found him, hours later.
“Ah, there you are,” he said, his voice betraying mild worry. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Anakin did not turn to greet him; instead, he opened his head and tilted his head up, trying to get more of the rain to fall over him. “I lost track of time.”
He expected Obi-Wan to tell him to come back to the camp—by then, Anakin was sure that everything was ready for their departure; the only one missing was him, and that was why Obi-Wan was there. To bring Anakin back to his ship, to his battalion, to the Republic.
Back to a war he was already tired of fighting.
Instead, Obi-Wan stepped closer and closer until he was right beside Anakin. Then, he sat down, hands poised on top of his knees, his head, like Anakin’s, turned toward the azure sky.
“I figure a few more minutes here won’t harm anyone,” Obi-Wan said, as he unclasped his cloak and threw it over Anakin’s shoulders. “Here; We can’t have you catching a cold, can we?”
Anakin finally tore his eyes from the sky, settling on his master’s face, framed by strands of auburn hair, so wet it looked almost brown. He could not remember the last time both of them had sat like that, so deeply at peace with the universe around them.
He wrapped the cloak tighter around his body, breathing the smell of Obi-Wan. For those fleeting minutes, it was almost as if death wasn’t waiting for them among the stars.
“Thank you,” Anakin said. Thank you for always knowing what to do. Thank you for being here when I need you the most.
Obi-Wan reached for Anakin’s hand and brought it to his lips. “Don’t worry, dearest. There isn’t anywhere else I’d rather be.”