Chapter Text
Obi-Wan breezed into Anakin's quarters at four past six in the evening, without so much as a knock—but that was Obi-Wan, always and uniquely capable of the one habit that annoyed Anakin the most, performed in the one fashion that would annoy Anakin the most. Always, and perpetually, irritating as hell, but that would be the way Obi-Wan was until the man keeled over and died, almost certainly.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Anakin mumbled. His face was still pressed into the arm of the couch—some hour and a half ago, he had collapsed on it, feeling incapable of being upright any longer but his head still throbbing too painfully to consider sleep. He spent so much time on the battlefield, the concussive sounds of war rolling through the screams of dying and terrified men, their lives ripping ragged holes in the Force as they died and died—he thought his headache might just be a constant thing, like a scar on his mind, left behind from the whiplash of it all. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up without a searing heat behind his eyes, like there wasn’t a vice strangling his head. “Do not even start in on it, or I’ll kick you out.”
The Force about them fluttered with confusion, Obi-Wan’s puzzlement flowing easily into the Light. “Start in on what?”
“I know Ahsoka skived off her classes. I am aware. That is why she’s in a private room in the library, making up that work right now. You can crow about revenge as much as you like, whenever the fuck you decide a time that is not this moment. I'll even pretend to listen."
Obi-Wan’s puzzlement turned quickly to bafflement. “Is that the reason you’re irate this evening? Did you and her argue? You are always more disagreeable, then, when the two of you argue."
“Not much,” Anakin said. Disagreeable made him not the least bit cranky, but there, he managed to hold his tongue—his self-control wouldn’t hold out for long, not as tired as he was, and as deeply Obi-Wan Kenobi as Obi-Wan always was. He hoped Obi-Wan was prepared for it. “She’s not happy with me, definitely. But your bragging is unnecessary and unwelcome.”
There was a shuffle, and the rasping of the hem of a robe on smooth stone before it met thicker carpet, the click of datapads as they rattled together in a bag. Obi-Wan settled into one of the chairs adjacent from the couch, and, Anakin could see it as clearly as if his eyes were looking at it, perhaps even more clearly thanks to the Force—he settled in that melodramatic fashion he always did, with one ankle balanced on one knee and leaned all the way back in his chair, as if he were determined to take up as much space as he could. Determined to sprawl so loudly no one could look at him and think he was anyone other than Obi-Wan Kenobi. It always made Anakin’s heart squeeze with fondness, and then the simultaneous urge to cuff the back of Obi-Wan’s head and say you’re ridiculous, Master, you know that?
“It looks like you’re having some difficulties,” Obi-Wan said, lightly, but through the Force, Anakin could sense his delight—and an earnest eagerness, the same curious emotion Anakin felt from him routinely, whenever Anakin crawled towards him miserably for direction on how to train a child at all, much less the spitfire of a child the Grandmaster had given him. He loved Ahsoka—and the Code would not forgive him for the strength of that love, would never forgive him the strength of it—but she was headstrong. Always so headstrong. Always so—worry-inducing.
“I did not invite you to speak on my difficulties. If you’ll notice, I invited the exact opposite. It’s not physically possible for you to shut up, though, is it.”
Obi-Wan hummed. “Ah, but as I recall, you told me not to address the fact that this is revenge. Which it entirely, absolutely, and completely is, but I don’t have to tell you that, clearly you’re aware. Nowhere did you say I shouldn’t speak on your difficulties.”
Another throbbing pain stabbed at his head, and Anakin nearly growled against it—he would blame Obi-Wan for that one. He squeezed his eyes more tightly shut, and buried his face a bit deeper in his arms, in a futile attempt to block off all untoward light. “Speak all you like, then. I won’t be listening.”
“When do you ever,” Obi-Wan said, with a long, blown-out breath.
“Plenty,” Anakin bit out. If he calls me out on lying, I'll throw something at his head, he thought.
There was another low rustling noise. “I truly did not know of your—difficulties—Anakin. At least, until you told me—thank you for the update, by the way, quite useful information. We had previously organized to speak this morning, however, and some of us follow our words, and are, of course, punctual, and prepared.”
Anakin huffed. Pain rattled through his ribcage, refracted downwards by his nerves; clearly it was going to be the kind of headache that made all of him hurt, and blur, like an unfortunate smudge on an unfortunate painting. “I don’t remember it.”
He could practically hear Obi-Wan’s raised eyebrow, as suddenly choked as the Force was with Obi-Wan’s unimpressed disdain; because, of course, Obi-Wan didn’t believe him. But as hard as Anakin scoured his mind, he couldn’t remember when and where he’d spoken to Obi-Wan that morning. He couldn’t even recall most of the morning, simply the knowledge that there must have been one, because he was breathing in the night, having lived through it. The inability to recall it unsettled him.
“Don’t be difficult, or I’ll play the holocomm recording back to you, and then we’ll see which of us is correct.”
Anakin sat up, scrubbing his eyes against the dull lance in his skull that pounded once, twice, three times. “I was not trying to be—difficult,” he said. “I don’t actually remember it. If I did, I wouldn’t be on the couch. I would be—prepared, as you put it.”
Obi-Wan’s brows furrowed. “And here I thought you were trying to communicate some grievance or another by your state of laziness. Anyway, look at this.”
He tossed Anakin a datapad, and Anakin caught it, flicking it on. He squinted against the light, swallowing back the rush of bile in his throat—his stomach twisted, curling into a knot. Maybe his ever-present headache had been joined by a stomach bug of a kind, or it was just more of his nerves getting confused, lost in the tangle of ache. “What is—numbers?”
“Wrong file. Those are—our rather abysmal budget readouts.”
Anakin snorted as he scanned columns and rows of credit amounts that scaled well into the billions. “Have you told the Council that we’re over budget this much because we’ve got the most useless armadas the galaxy has ever seen? How many times have we had to use freighters as makeshift tugships to dock the Negotiator because the sublights are on the fritz? They’re poorly made rush orders, if they’d been right the first time the repairs wouldn’t be this costly."
The only thing that eased his annoyance, which seemed to throb in tune with his unshakable headache, was that Obi-Wan, for once, looked nearly as irritated as Anakin did. “Attempts were made,” Obi-Wan said. “Ki-Adi is supposed to convene with both a new budget committee and a group of outsourced engineers.”
“Ki-Adi is on Sullust, and has been on Sullust for three months, and is probably going to be on Sullust for three more months. I rather think he likes it there, given how long that campaign has lasted.”
Obi-Wan dipped his head, flicked one of his hands. “You know how it goes. It’s a convenient way to avoid straining the budget any further for the moment. Buying time, as it were.”
“Why not Master Tiin—I don’t understand. Master Tiin is here, in the Temple, and he’s far more knowledgeable here than Ki-Adi is—what is the point?” Anakin said.
“The Senate is going to drag its heels on this as well. I understand you’d prefer if no one dragged their heels, padawan, but no one else in the galaxy moves as fast as you do. At least this gives them time to form a committee without keeping a Jedi Master locked on Coruscant, instead of acting on the battlefield,” Obi-Wan said. “But that's enough of that. The other file is my actual delivery to you.”
Anakin switched to it, and was immediately greeted by lines and lines of sprawling code, and as he skimmed the file's full contents, pages of notes on cryptographic methods and encryption sequences, even device schematics further down. “What a delivery,” he murmured. “What am I looking at?”
“You know as well as I do how dangerous our intelligence breaches have gotten, Anakin. You’re looking at the proposed solutions.”
Anakin scrolled through it. “Something tells me this is a little above my clearance. At least an inch higher. Maybe two."
Obi-Wan snorted. “It is so far above your clearance I would be declared a traitor for showing it to you, if the Chancellor didn’t already favor you. I guarantee you the next time you speak to him, he’ll blather every sensitive detail like he’s complaining about Weather Control and not the most sensitive military intel the Republic has.”
Anakin scowled, first, at the way Obi-Wan spoke of His Excellency—he and Obi-Wan would never agree on the Chancellor, no matter how many times Anakin had tried to convince Obi-Wan of the man’s merits, both as a friend or a father and as a leader—but then he registered the word traitor, and stilled.
“This isn’t a betrayal of the Republic for me to look at,” he said, slowly, “is it? Obi-Wan, you can’t be serious.”
Obi-Wan rolled his eyes. “The day you betray the Republic is the day the galaxy ends, my friend. It’s—sensitive information, simply put. Six weeks ago, the Republic commissioned an independent team of security analysts to redesign the Republic’s comm systems, encryption methods, and ciphers. That file there is both an analysis of the weaknesses in our current systems, and then the proposed adjustments, purported to be the security that will save this Republic from losing the war.”
If possible, Anakin stilled even further. “That isn’t just high clearance, Obi-Wan, then, this would be the key to—”
Obi-Wan held up a hand. “I’m aware. I’m aware of how important the information is. There is a reason there were only four of us present in the Council chamber today. There is a reason we endeavored to broadcast as loudly as we could on every information stream that the real war councils would meet in three sessions in the coming days—it was a red herring, as it were. Look closely at the wrong moment. We’re trying to keep this as close to our chests as possible. That development team remains under the constant protection of the Coruscant Guard this very moment, their communications monitored closely round-the-clock. Those four were myself, Master Yoda, Master Windu, and the Chancellor. This is—the most sensitive information we have.”
Anakin swallowed. “And you’re handing it to me. Under the table. Illegally. Obi-Wan—”
“Oh, you suddenly care about laws now?” Obi-Wan asked, smirking beneath his beard. It did desperately need a trim—he looked about as fluffy as a bantha—and there was a twinkle in his eye that Anakin found particularly disturbing. “Why don’t I tell your dearest friend the Chancellor about the myriad of times you have broken criminal law by participating in all manner of illegal street racing and betting? Don’t think I don’t remember it vividly. Beautifully vividly. As it would happen, I have a memory like a steel trap, little one.”
Anakin shook his head, and attempted to keep the smugness that he felt out of his voice. “Jedi Operative Bill One-Thirteen, sub-section auresek, clause four. A Jedi with the official sanction of a recognized Republican legislative, executive or judicial power, as certified by the Republican Galactic Commission and therefore recognized by the Republic itself, of internal status rank padawan or higher, who has been ordained by the Jedi High Council to act as an operative of the Republic may violate Republican law to the end of—”
Obi-Wan stared at him, shocked, and then broke out into a deep belly laugh, the kind that made Anakin warm in the chest to listen to, the kind Anakin didn’t hear from so often anymore. “Of course you have clause four memorized, you absolute—brat, you absolute brat, there simply isn’t another word for what you are,” Obi-Wan said. “It does not change the fact that the High Council did not ordain your street racing career as a mission, and that the Republic—”
“That’s my point,” Anakin said, smugly now, unable to keep his voice neutral any longer. “The Chancellor knows. He thinks it means I have heart, you see. He’s given his official sanction, just in case anyone tries to drag it out of the mud, and the only office that can override the requirement for the High Council’s sanction is the Chancellor’s. Because he’s my friend, Obi-Wan, and not nearly as awful as you think.”
Obi-Wan’s mirth seemed to slip away from him. It flicked Anakin on the raw—Obi-Wan had no right to complain about the Chancellor as often as he did, when the Chancellor had done so much for Anakin. But he swallowed the irritation; their blowouts over the Chancellor never ended well. “That’s my point, however,” Obi-Wan said. “Chancellor Palpatine frequently disrupts our clearance levels when it comes to you. I’m simply beating him to the punch, so to speak, padawan mine.”
Anakin’s brows furrowed. “He can’t disrupt clearance levels, Master. He’s the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, those are his clearance levels to disrupt. It is the law.”
Obi-Wan thumbed his beard. “I don’t have the strength to discuss the Chancellor with you at this moment, Anakin. Maybe not ever. One of these days we’ll have to lay that particular topic to rest. What I am attempting to say is, I do feel justified in making this move, regardless of the technical legality. No one is more loyal than you, and no one has the trust of the Chancellor more than you do. And if I can’t trust you with this information, then there would be no one I could, in this galaxy or the next. And I cannot shake the sense that there’s something deeply wrong, here, padawan.”
Anakin hid his gaze, flicking his eyes down to the Aurebesh, the numbers, to hide that—between how tired he was, and the throbbing in his head, Obi-Wan’s words made him simply want to weep. To run and hide somewhere, and hold them close to his chest, greedily, like a krayt dragon holds its kill. Or maybe even simply to bask in the words, one of Tatooine’s millions of heat-seeking cold-blooded beasts drawn to the belting heat of double noon. “Wrong?”
“There is something wrong here,” Obi-Wan said, seriously. “I can sense it. I’ve spent every hour since the conclusion of that conference meditating, and I’m certain there is something we’re missing, something that’s going to cost us everything. There are plans to begin covertly implementing these modifications at the end of the month, starting at the highest levels and then eventually trickling down to even adjusting the encryption in the comm connections in the troopers’ helmets. We don’t know where information is getting leaked, which is—what’s taken this so long to even be brought to the table. It is a complete overhaul. We can’t find anywhere else to start. I don’t know my cloak from my lightsaber when it comes to coding. But, fortunately, I have a padawan who is, by all reports, quite good at it. Simply put, I want you to review it, and either tell me I’m a delusional old man, or tell me I’m brilliant. That’s all.”
Anakin hummed. “This doesn’t make sense,” he said. “None of you have experience with coding, sure, but we have Jedi talented at it. Why didn’t the Grandmaster and Master Windu call upon any Jedi already associated with the war effort for this? Wouldn’t it be much simpler to keep it under wraps that way?”
“Take that up with your good friend,” Obi-Wan said, sourly. “With the information leaks, and—the reputation damage our dear Pong Krell did to the Order—the Chancellor reports to us that there are rumblings in the Senate of a coalition preparing to demand the Jedi Order be thoroughly investigated for Separatist spies, and, should they be discovered, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Potentially, even, the Order itself as a body be held accountable for their presence. This is his compromise, in the efforts of keeping his image looking pristine—hedging his bets, playing both sides. It’s practically snake-like.”
“Or, he’s a man with an impossible job trying to keep a Senate and an Order of millions of beings babysat, not a mastermind playing the field like a snake,” Anakin snarled. His own voice was too loud, causing his headache to twist and slam into his skull with the force of a steel hammer, and he just barely avoided wincing.
“Your feelings cloud your judgment,” Obi-Wan said, and stood. “He’s like any other politician the galaxy has ever seen, a power-hungry desk jockey. Now, I am making tea.”
“You should make me a cup,” Anakin suggested, glancing back down at the datapad. “Do I still have to go to those war councils if I know they were planned just to hide the—whatever in the Sith hells this is?”
He still rankled from Obi-Wan’s comments, even as Anakin opted to ignore them. In his mind’s eye, he could still remember being so much younger, the Temple blindingly new, life at the heart of the galaxy still somehow so lonely, the Chancellor what felt like his only friend in all the universe. The color feeling sucked out of the world, without the twin suns to light it up, eleven years old, and looking for life’s loophole, the special lever he could pull that would make it all stop, even if Anakin couldn’t define really what it was. The grinding feeling in his chest, maybe. Or the way that his ribcage sometimes felt stiffer than steel. The other padawans hadn’t liked him much at all, opting either to avoid him, or to jeer is it true you’re a slave, is that why you’re too stupid to read, or whatever strangeness in Anakin they had chosen to pick out and tear at that day. He never could tell Obi-Wan—it was shameful, and it wasn’t supposed to tear him up on the inside the way it did, because he was a Jedi and he should be better than that—but he did tell the Chancellor, when he couldn’t figure out anywhere else to take it, and it wouldn’t leave him alone. Once, he’d cried, I’m always in their way, no matter where I go. He could still remember His Excellency’s warm hand on his shoulder, the sad cut of his mouth, as he murmured, it is all a matter of perspective, Anakin, you see. You are not in their way, they are in yours. The solution is to make them move. Wolves do not weep for the likes of sheep, and you, my boy, are the wolf. Take them down. Obi-Wan was wrong about the Chancellor. The Chancellor was one of the kindest men Anakin knew.
Obi-Wan stretched—something in his spine cracked loudly, which made Anakin snort—and started off to the kitchen, shuffling around for the three entire mugs Anakin and Ahsoka had between them. “Oh, you have that Wykrian tea,” he said. “I’ve heard it’s strong. Two bags or one?”
“Two, if you like your mouth to taste like menthol.”
“One it is,” Obi-Wan said. There was the flick of the sink knobs, the shudder of pipes and the hiss of water through the faucet—the sounds almost relaxed Anakin by force, after how many times he had heard them. The rasp of the cast iron teapot Obi-Wan had given him—a moving out gift, and one of Anakin’s favorites of his meager possessions. Familiar. All familiar.
“You do have to go,” Obi-Wan said, after several moments. Anakin hadn’t realized his eyes had drifted closed, just listening to the sound of Obi-Wan scuttling about his kitchen, but they had. They felt impossible to open. “Every unoccupied general has to attend, that’s the point. Except, of course, you know—the dear, treasured Master Mundi, still on Sullust.”
“Forever trapped on Sullust,” Anakin murmured.
Obi-Wan laughed, quietly. “I must say, I feel a bit disingenuous complaining about a fellow member of the High Council as such. What can I say, though. He makes it too easy.”
“I complain about everyone and everything. I don’t know why you feel bad.”
“Tch, you complain about nearly everything, do give yourself the one ounce of credit you deserve,” Obi-Wan said. “The one thing you don’t complain of, however—your health. Did you think I wasn’t going to notice that you look like death warmed over, little one, or at any point were you going to mention it?”
“Little one, he says,” Anakin sniped. “I’m taller than you are.”
“I recognize, entirely, that biology has made a decision. I don’t deny it. I just find it to be incorrect, and thusly ignore it. On with it, are you ill? I have some lemon tea stored in my quarters, it is ideal for a sore throat.”
“Headache,” Anakin grunted.
Obi-Wan hummed. “In that case I retract all sympathy.”
Anakin opened one eye, specifically to glare, half-lidded, at Obi-Wan. “What if it’s a deadly headache, how will you feel later.”
“The exact same,” Obi-Wan said. “You understand that over the years you have given me no less than one headache daily, I have exceedingly little sympathy for you finally receiving your dues. I am heartened that the Force would be so kind and fair, even.”
Anakin scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’ll end you.”
“Doubtlessly. And you’ll do it by giving me a headache. I’ll go out the way that I lived, dealing with my walking migraine of a padawan.”
Anakin drifted off, loosely, after that. He was aware of the world around him—Obi-Wan shuffling through his quarters, doing whatever it was that Obi-Wan sought to do when Anakin wasn’t looking. But he wasn’t aware enough to act, and even if he wanted to, he wasn’t entirely certain he could move at all—his limbs were like iron, pain curling dully through them, but it was distant from himself, somewhere else, somewhere far. He didn’t remember when his drifting turned into actual sleep, but at some point he registered the rattle of metal, and jolted—armor, what battlefield was he on—what scrap metal was—
When he jerked upright, twisting to look at the noise, Ahsoka stared at him from the dark kitchen. There was very faint light fading in from the lightpanels closer to the door, which dimmed, but never entirely turned off—and Togruta eyes reflected light rather sharply, so he could see the opaque discs of her eyes reflecting that dim light, eerie yet comforting because he’d woken up to those eyes in a hundred tents on a hundred battlefronts. The Force was choked with how very startled the both of them were. “I was just trying to make some frozen jukira rolls,” she whisper-hissed. “I’m sorry.”
“What time,” Anakin rasped, but his voice grew thin and gave out, and he had to swallow hard against the sand in his throat and try again, “what time is it?”
“If I answer that you might get mad,” Ahsoka said.
Anakin waved a hand. “I might be too tired to be mad,” he said, rubbing at his face. His head throbbed hard, and he winced, despite himself. Every time he fell asleep he hoped, blearily, that the headache would fade, but it never left him, joined by a grinding in his bones and a blunt pain in his chest a good portion of the time. His chest ached fiercely then, though it hadn’t so much earlier. And, for reasons he couldn’t identify, he was sweating like he had just run for miles.
“It’s about two standard,” she said.
Anakin stilled. “You’re kidding. I’ve been asleep that long?”
Ahsoka picked her baked jukira rolls off of the rack with a set of tongs, dropping them on a waiting plate. “I don’t know how long you’ve been asleep, I just got back.”
The sickening thing, he thought, was that he still wanted sleep—could still feel the desire for it gnawing through him, despite the fact that he’d lingered on or near this particular couch almost all day. There was something Anakin had meant to do, maybe somewhere he’d meant to go, but even if he scrabbled at his memory, searching—there was nothing. He could only remember thinking well, if I give it some rest, it may leave me alone. His gut vaulted.
“Give me a minute,” he choked out, “and then we’ll talk about—why you’re back at two standard.”
“Sure thing, Skyguy.”
Anakin twisted off the couch—his balance was wrong, and he landed on his hands and knees and had to pull himself upright while Ahsoka snickered at him—and then brushed past her through the doorway to the kitchen, and, theoretically, there was a refresher at the end of kitchen, and it wasn’t technically that far. But his gut twisted again, and he thought fuck it and then bent and vomited bile into the sink. Ahsoka had seen worse than regurgitated stomach acid. She’d seen worse from Anakin himself, on any one of the number of occasions where he’d gotten caught by shrapnel or blaster bolts and hit the mud, guts spooling out of him. He could remember grinning at her with bloodied teeth. Ahsoka would grin back—this was her life, and this was how she knew him.
“Maybe we should talk about how late I got back tomorrow,” Ahsoka said, biting into a jukira roll.
“You’re not—” Anakin broke off for a moment, to hack wetly into the sink a couple times, “getting out of this. Sit down.”
Around her mouthful, Ahsoka said, “I’m not trying to get out of it, I’m just saying that maybe you need to get out of it.”
“Which is as good as saying you are trying to get out of it. Sit down on the couch.”
Ahsoka scowled—she had, definitely, been trying to get out of a lecture, because as piss poor of a disciplinarian as Anakin could be, he at least tried to emulate his own Master’s particular brand of talk them to death about consequences punitive measures. Ahsoka hated it more than anything, and had called him a preachy hypocrite more than once. Anakin had no response to that—it was usually true, and already he was struggling, because there was not a Jedi padawan in the whole of the Temple who had snuck out more than Anakin had. He was usually decent at cobbling together his own half-learned lessons and filling the gaps in with words he thought Obi-Wan would impart. But, typically, he wasn’t vomiting his guts out while trying to think of a proper lecture.
Ahsoka sat cross-legged on the couch, tearing into jukira rolls somewhat like she tore into Separatist droids. Anakin coughed into the sink a couple more times, and, satisfied he wasn’t going to throw up again, flicked the water on and scrubbed it out. He only realized Ahsoka was asking for him when he turned it off, and he could hear the murmur of her voice.
He turned his head. “What?”
Ahsoka was squinting at him, on the last of her rolls. “I asked if you wanted the last one, maybe four times.”
“The sink was on. I couldn’t hear you.”
“You never hear me,” she said, with something like a grin, but sharper, with sharper teeth. “Remember, we were in the hangar, working on the Aethersprites? And you had your head in the hull and me and Rex had a bet on how long we could call your name, and you wouldn’t hear us—”
“I remember,” Anakin interrupted, somewhat crossly. That one, he did remember, because they had both lost; because he’d never heard them, the only reason he’d known they were there had been because of the Force. He’d thought they were talking to each other. It’d unsettled him, that he couldn’t hear it, and—maybe that was what he had planned on doing, earlier, to take that walk of shame to the Halls of Healing and say, people have to shout at me to talk to me, and sometimes all I hear is this ringing, like comm static. Fix it, my padawan is mocking me.
“It’s all that hot air in there, Skyguy, I swear,” she said, impishly.
Anakin’s head throbbed, and he rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Do you have those—flimsi notes, still, that stick places.”
Ahsoka tilted her head. “Yeah, I use them for studying.”
“I need one. I forgot to do something today. I would not like to forget tomorrow.”
Ahsoka bobbed her head, her beads tinkling together as she did so. “I guess I can give you one, because I’m nice. Do you want the last roll?”
Anakin waved a hand. “No, go for it. That is your bonus for—receiving a lecture.”
“Oh, Force. You really are going to try it now.”
“I’m assuming you snuck out of the Temple both when you skived off classes and when you got back at—this time,” Anakin finished, lamely, because he’d forgotten what time she’d said it was. “You’re not supposed to do that.”
“I didn’t sneak out, so you’re wrong about that,” she said. “I was just—on the roof. Of the Temple. It’s a good view, actually, of the Senate district.”
Anakin shifted—but somewhere he’d miscalculated, and instead his hip cracked into the opposite counter, and he stumbled forward, until he braced his hand on the doorway and leaned there. “That was smooth,” he said.
He waited for Ahsoka’s snicker, but it didn’t come. She just stared at him, her eyes pinched in concern. “Are you—okay? Are you, uh—have you been drinking?”
“I do not really drink,” Anakin said, numbly. “That’s more Obi-Wan’s pastime. I think I’m just tired.”
Ahsoka tapped her fingers against the edge of her plate. “You were just complaining about sleeping too long.”
“Was I,” Anakin rasped. He squeezed his eyes shut—the shadows of the room seemed to dip and whorl, like smoke, blurring in ways that made him want to be sick again. “I don’t think I was. I would have to know what time it is.”
“I literally just told you,” Ahsoka said.
Anakin swallowed. “Then I’m a bad listener. Go to sleep. We can do this tomorrow.”
Ahsoka pushed past him, in the kitchen’s narrow archway, and then slid her plate into the sink. “Sounds exciting,” she said, sharply.
Anakin reached out and tapped her shoulder. “I’m not—truthfully angry, Snips. I understand needing space. And you were just in the Senate district, anyway.”
Ahsoka stared at him. “Skyguy. Anakin. I told you I was on the roof. I was only looking at the Senate district. I said that two whole seconds ago. You’re less half asleep, more ninety percent asleep.”
Anakin blinked, and then scrubbed at his face, like he could scrub off the film over his mind; he felt slow and stupid, and his face flushed with heat from the embarrassment, and it was then that he realized he was trembling all over, having not realized he was freezing until a new sensation grounded him to his body. He trembled a lot, recently, like a leaf in the wind, and sometimes he wasn’t entirely sure if he was actually cold or if his body was broken by war in strange ways. Anakin loathed it, because it made him feel fragile—like delicate, hand-blown glass, that would shatter on impact.
I’m sorry, Anakin wanted to say, but didn’t, because he made it a habit to swallow his apologies and hold them in his chest. He was nothing if not in possession of bad habits. “Tired, I guess,” he supplied.
Ahsoka looked at him, keenly, a moment longer, and then she was in his arms, squeezing him tightly around the middle. “Go to sleep,” she said, the words muffled by his robes.
Anakin cupped the back of her head, thumbing the leathery-smooth skin of her montrals. “You should sleep as well, little one,” he murmured.
Ahsoka lingered in the embrace for a few moments longer, and then slipped off to her room, leaving Anakin hanging against the wall, somehow feeling unbalanced—not only in his mind, but physically, like he was a strong gust of wind away from falling over. At some point, he managed to stumble back to the couch—his knees were stiff and knotted with pain, and it seemed more exhausting than it was worth to wander to his own room—and dropped back on it, slithering back into black unconsciousness. The next time he awoke, the lightpanels had brightened to simulate internal twilight and someone had pulled one of his own cloaks over him—and Anakin recognized it, immediately, as his own, because it smelled mostly like motor oil with a hint of the metallic taste of blood. There was shuffling, again, in the kitchen, and an annoyed huff, and Anakin immediately recognized that particular huff as Obi-Wan’s.
“I have been on leave,” Anakin said, voice dry and thick with sleep, “For a day and a half. And you have managed—to invade my territory no less than twice.”
“Oh, goodness me, you do seek to grace me with your presence after all,” Obi-Wan called. “I’d become convinced you were comatose. In all the time that I have known you, Anakin, you have never slept later than I have. I feel like I’ve won something. I should receive a congratulatory gift.”
“The right to be an ass, is what you would have won, if you had not been born an ass first.”
Obi-Wan laughed, nearly startled, a loud belly laugh that warmed something in Anakin’s chest. “You are such a thorny little creature. For once, I am the morning person, and you, beastling, are the sufferer. I am the most gracious of Masters, and as such, I brought you a little headache remedy, in that thermos on the table.”
Anakin pushed himself upright, shaking his head and rubbing at his face. He was startled, for a moment, at how thick and sticky his robes were—he hadn’t had a blanket most of the night, but had still managed to sweat clean through his robes. If he’d had any nightmares—and he usually did—he couldn’t remember them, but he must have, to have sweat so much. The stickiness was uncomfortable, and it wasn’t helped that he was freezing, now. Anakin squinted at the steel mug on the table. Beside it was a neon green sticky flimsi slip, there for reasons Anakin couldn’t recall. “This unnerves me. What’s in it?”
“Kashyyk flower tea, a spoonful of honey, ground abalmary and a shot of Corellian whiskey,” Obi-Wan said. “When you were a child, and you got those migraines? That is what I would give you. Without the whiskey, naturally.”
Anakin bolted upright and gulped a quarter of the mug down in one go. His heart raced in his chest as he did it—maybe, Anakin thought, from the suddenness of the movement. “You could have just come out and said it was your magic tea.”
Obi-Wan laughed again, another loud belly laugh—he was always deliriously happy when they reached the Temple, and though he hadn’t had a proper leave in a while, too, Anakin knew. Even spending a night or two on Coruscant bolstered his mood. It was good, to see the lines of tension melt off of his old Master, even if just for a moment. “My magic tea, yes, if that’s how you think of it. I felt bad offering it to you as a child. The whiskey is what does the wonders.”
Anakin took another long pull of it, pressing a hand to his chest in the hopes that he could soothe the twisting ache there. “That’s because you use this as a hangover remedy, not a migraine remedy,” he said. “I hope you are not attempting to cook in my kitchen. I like it not burnt down. In fact, get out of there, you standing next to the stove is going to convince it to set itself on fire.”
“Oh, blast you,” Obi-Wan said. “I am no homemaker, I am a Jedi Master, and there is nothing wrong with that. As it were, when I arrived you looked right pathetic just laying there, padawan, but I had a mind to solve the issue, and popped off to Dex’s for breakfast.”
Anakin’s eyes widened. His head pounded, but he shoved the urge to wince at it aside. His heart pounded again; now there was a strange pressure in his chest, like someone had filled it to bursting with water, but his heart slammed hard against his sternum over and over and over. “You have Dex’s in there?”
Obi-Wan leaned around the corner, his mustache lifted at the corners with the depth of his smile. “It is actual food, and not compressed nutrition bars. I have scarcely been able to remember actual food. This may be the best meal I have eaten to date, simply because I’ve forgotten such fine things as salt.”
“You think it’s been bad for you? You do not even use salt. I have to yell at you to salt anything enough,” Anakin said. “Bantha-brained arasali ba’at—”
Obi-Wan waved a hand, interrupting Anakin’s string of Huttese. Arasali ba’at technically meant pariah-fucker, a strong insult in Huttese’s strict social hierarchy; maybe pariah wasn’t quite the right Basic word for it, but there wasn’t really a Basic word for the arasali, a group loosely defined by all being too poor to own slaves. But it wasn’t as if Obi-Wan would ever know what it meant, and it wasn’t as if Anakin meant it literally—the insult was almost never used literally. It wasn’t as if Anakin could use it literally, as a Hutt slave, with the inactive bomb buried in his neck and the scars and the brand on one of his shoulders, faded and warped with age and the height he’d gained since it’d been burned there when he was five and old enough to be branded with Gardulla’s crest. “This is why I have demanded that you do the cooking. You’re welcome to cease your mockeries at any point you choose, but I would suggest the one where you remember that I ventured to get us this fine meal, and you have done precisely nothing but sleep in.”
Anakin’s mouth twisted, and guilt roiled through his heavy chest. Ahsoka had managed not to wake him, as she left early for her lessons—and Anakin felt dull, like an unsharpened blade, like the combat instincts he had honed for so many years crumpled and failed him. He was a light sleeper, and he always had been; and he also woke early, and always had, a pattern set into his bones by Tatooine’s twin sunrise. When he glanced at the chrono fixed on the wall, it read to him nine standard. Typically he would have already been awake for hours. The guilt at his own laziness choked him, and he resolved in that instant to spend a number of hours sparring, re-honing that blade, letting the thick guilt in his chest out in the burning swing of his weapon. He would spar until he could barely stand, and afterwards he would bask in that helpless exhaustion and the satisfaction of something accomplished. The work was done day by day and night by night, every day, and every night.
Anakin polished off the magic tea, and thunked the thermos on the table, forcing himself upright—immediately, the world spun like a top, but Anakin shook his head and fumbled his way through it to the kitchen. Sometimes he was inexplicably dizzy, without a real explanation as to why; usually it was attributable to exhaustion, but, today, Anakin had no excuses.
“I was going to bring it to you,” Obi-Wan said, amused, when Anakin materialized by his side. “I see you simply could not wait. Not that I can blame you. That bowl over there is yours.”
Anakin lifted the bowl into his hands, breathing in deep the smell of it. His flesh hand was trembling, and he braced it underneath with his durasteel mechanical hand. “Corellian whiskey, Corellian stir fry with deep-fried karetschi—today is a day I owe to Corellia.”
“Leave it to Corellians to know good food and good drink,” Obi-Wan said. “You know, you truly ought to go to Corellia, when this blasted war’s over. Sign up for the first Corellian delegation mission you can find. Qui-Gon and I once spent several weeks there, when I was a teenager. I possibly ate my bodyweight in gayesh noodles.”
Anakin took another deep inhale of the smell—beautiful, and the spice already burned his nose, just the way he liked it. “The smell’s going to get me more inebriated than the whiskey. You’re nearest the conservator, can you get me a glass of water?”
Obi-Wan flicked his hand to two transportable, lidded cups sitting beside each other on the counter. “I’m no animal, padawan, I purchased drinks.”
Anakin peered at them. “What in the world did you get?”
“Something I wanted and needed desperately—herbal Rylothian attai tea.”
Anakin stared at Obi-Wan, who was grinning broadly, now. “I may fucking weep at the thought of it,” he said.
Obi-Wan laughed. “You may weep all that you desire, as long as you drink your cup. It was not what I would call cheap, but certainly a worthy thing to spend a portion of my stipend on.”
“I may have to sit down to take this in.”
Obi-Wan gestured to the couch. “What gunship do you think this is? Does it look like we’re choking down grotesque ration bars before jumping face-first into the fray? Absolutely not. What in the galaxy, padawan, I had no intention of eating standing up like one of those beasts of burden they strap a bag to—absolutely not! Sit down. This is to be enjoyed.”
They shuttled over the bowls of takeout and the drinks and extra glasses of water—Obi-Wan fiddled with the lightpanels and brightened them further, the setting meant to simulate real morning sunlight, though Tatooine’s suns had burned themselves so thoroughly in Anakin’s mind that everything less than blinding seemed dusky, to him. And, true to form, the first bite did make Anakin nearly weep; it was a strict diet of cheap rations, on the warfront, even when they camped on a planet’s surface, because the shelling and noise spooked anything good to catch for miles, and on the far-flung worlds they fought over in the Outer Rim, there was a higher-than-average chance that the Republic’s universal allergy booster shots and the universal illness booster shots had missed something, for someone, and they had few enough medical supplies anyway. But shipments of ration packs were getting slower; the Separatists knew where to fix a bottleneck thanks to the information leaks, and what freighters to lay traps for. Booze and pour-over caf, though—at least they never ran out of those. On any given day Anakin would bet the exhausted soldiers of the 501st were running on more acetate and caffeine than real nutrients. That was the major reason he was on Coruscant, anyway, following an agonizing defeat at Columex, a waystation on one of the most important trade routes in the galaxy that was now entirely Separatist-controlled; in the debriefing following, after four days spent fighting in a sweltering jungle watching people die and knowing they wouldn’t have if they’d been allowed just another hour of sleep, Anakin had snapped, I don’t know how the Council and the Senate expect me to win battles when my soldiers are exhausted and starving.
It had earned his legion leave, though. The 501st would be grounded for two months in the military barracks near the Senate building, recovering, with Ahsoka; Anakin had been told he’d be deployed again after a month, but he couldn’t remember where Master Plo had said it would be and what Jedi General he’d be joining, as much as he scrambled for purchase on the memory. He wasn’t looking forward to being separated from Ahsoka, but he pushed it to the back of his mind, thinking instead about his empty stomach—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten anything. He could remember tearing into a ration bar, dizzy out of his brain from hunger on Columex, ducking beneath a fallen tree and shoving it down because the Separatists weren’t far off and he didn’t have much time. But he hadn’t had anything that didn’t taste like grit-gruel in—nine months, actually. Exactly nine months.
“It’s good, isn’t it,” Obi-Wan said.
“I had forgotten I had tastebuds,” Anakin said, shoveling another bite into his mouth. “Do you think—do you think we could get this for the soldiers? They deserve it. They’re the ones responsible for winning the battles.”
Obi-Wan hummed. “Dex does have a catering business. But, ah—I am not entirely sure it is robust enough for that many people. I could ask. That’d be expensive.”
“I have nine months of stipends I haven’t used a singular credit of,” Anakin said. And my wife is wealthy enough on her own that she could buy all of Tatooine, he thought.
“We can look into it. They do receive honorary hospitality from most places on Coruscant, at any rate.”
“I think they’ve earned a meal delivered to them, for once,” Anakin said, steeling himself against a jerking shiver. He was shivering, again—shivering already.
“Most certainly.”
Anakin tried to slow down, to enjoy it, he really did; but something in his stomach took over for his hands and he started scarfing it down like he didn’t know for sure when his next meal would be. He used to be better about it, before the war—he’d been awful about it as a child, new to the Temple and new to the concept of regular food, and would eat so fast he’d throw up, convinced there was a chance he wouldn’t be fed again. Obi-Wan had devised a clever little system that Anakin hadn’t recognized at the time, but later, when he was older, the knowledge slotted itself into place, in one of those realizations that had warmed his chest and made him nervous all at the same time. Whenever Anakin started eating too fast, Obi-Wan wrangled him into a conversation about mechanics—and then the talking took over, distracted from the meal by the urge to explain what it was, precisely, that flux capacitors did.
This time, Obi-Wan just balled up a napkin and threw it at Anakin’s nose, where it bounced off and fell into Anakin’s half-demolished bowl. “Slow down, you horrible little creature,” Obi-Wan said. “The first war council is scheduled for tonight—fairly late, actually, but it was the closest to an agreeable hour that the Council could find with so many of us in far-flung systems. But we have the whole day to ourselves. I’ve been planning on meditating in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. I’m quite excited to do so. You’re welcome to join.”
Anakin dipped his head. “I wanted to—the training salles. Duel, for a bit.”
Obi-Wan stared at him openly. “You get off a battlefront and the first thing you want to do is fight more?”
Anakin growled. “No, I mean—duel, Obi-Wan, not use my lightsaber like a glorified door opener. The art of the thing. I suppose I feel lazy.”
Obi-Wan snorted. “Only you, Anakin. Second day of leave and feeling lazy. You’re utterly mad. One day, padawan mine, I will teach you the value of slowing down, when you need it.”
Anakin huffed. “Don’t you miss dueling? Not fighting, but dueling, not blocking blaster bolts but—getting to actually use the damn thing.”
Obi-Wan’s eyes sharpened. Hungrily, even—it heartened Anakin that, as much as Obi-Wan pretended otherwise, he enjoyed the artful movement of a blade just as much as Anakin did. “Perhaps you’re right. If you meditate with me, I’ll join you in the salles. It has been too long since we had a real spar.”
Anakin grinned. “Sounds ideal, Master,” he said. “After that—I don’t know.”
“Sleep,” Obi-Wan said, immediately. “We’ll be up all night. And then in the morning—a review of the Council’s new orders, and perhaps a look at that lovely little present I got you, being the kind Master that I am.”
Anakin pinched the bridge of his nose. “My Master is a traitor to the Republic, and a fiend.”
“Only one of those is true. I am no fiend. You insult me.”
They finished off their food and drink with more idle commentary, and when it came time to bring the bowls to the kitchen Anakin stood and blackness gnawed at his vision, his mind vaulting somewhere high and away while he pitched forward, vision gone and the incessant ringing in his ears stabbing at his skull. Obi-Wan’s hand pressed against his shoulder, holding him up. He was speaking, but Anakin couldn’t hear him, so he shook his head and then moments later the blackness gnawed its way back, and Anakin could read Obi-Wan’s lips.
“—to your head, hasn’t it,” Obi-Wan was saying, with a grin. “All that spice. Imagine that, it tastes like something.”
Anakin’s head throbbed, violently, and there was an all-over hurt that occupied him thoroughly; deeper than the muscle soreness he knew so well, but not quite as deep as the stiff and painful joints he knew just as well, like someone had laid a cloak of dull ache across his shoulders and he couldn’t remember when. Distressingly, he wanted to lay back on the couch and go to sleep.
“I should take a shower,” Anakin mumbled. As he said it, he thought about it—the luxury that was scorching himself with blinding hot water, and how much he really, truly loved that luxury. The Temple’s water heaters, and the water pressure, were phenomenal, and after nine months of sonic showers he really, truly missed both of those things about the Jedi Temple. He wanted it greedily.
“No offense, but you do smell like sweat,” Obi-Wan said, his hand still holding Anakin up. The touch was kind—bracing, and it was helping him ignore the pins-and-needles sensation in his skin, how no breath seemed to give him enough oxygen.
“Offense not taken.”
Obi-Wan frowned at him. “I know you feel sick now, padawan, but it’s—exhaustion, you know. It’s happened to me, after a few months without a rest, like your body simply gives in at the first opportunity. And it’s been a direly long time, for you. No sparring today, I should think, my friend.”
Anakin shook his head. “I do not want to be lazy,” he said.
Obi-Wan stared at him, for a long moment; his hand seemed to burn its presence against Anakin’s chest. Obi-Wan had steel-gray eyes, and Anakin had always had the wild thought that they were windows to Obi-Wan’s spine—a steel-whet thing, stronger than he could ever imagine being, like the cold-pressed core of him was the raw image of the strength a Jedi should covet, quiet and strong and everlasting like stone. Anakin had looked it up, once, and found that most of Stewjon’s civilization was settled above the alpine level, in the frosty gray-cragged mountain peaks; and Anakin, privately, thought that Obi-Wan would have been right at home there, like the jonyaks that braved the curling snow and sheer cliff faces simply by ducking their horned heads down further and marching forward with all the more determination. Obi-Wan was a Soresu Master not simply because he learned the form; he was a gifted Master because his soul was like that, carved in endurance, like for all that Anakin had height and weight and strength on him, there was nothing he could do that could knock Obi-Wan aside.
Obi-Wan, in the annoying fashion he had, promptly chose to thwack Anakin on the back of the head. “Lazy?” he squawked. “What in your tiny mind do you think leave is for, my friend? That is the point, you baffling boy. And to think I taught you to read in Basic myself, and my efforts were wasted purely because you won’t sit down long enough to read a directive. The insolence astounds.”
Anakin scowled. “You’re awful, Master.”
Obi-Wan cuffed his head again. “How dare you say that to me. Go take your shower, I’ll be here when you get out. If you don’t want to meditate, I’d always be delighted to find Ahsoka at the commissary, later, when it’s lunch.”
“I wonder what they have,” Anakin murmured.
“You just ate practically two meals, and you’re hungry again?”
Anakin huffed. “You’re the one constantly reminding me that I have to go back to nutritional rations at some point. Yes, correct, I am fucking starving, for food that tastes like food.”
He’d spent most of Columex starving; the Separatists’ tactic of firing on their freighters had hit them hardest, then, though it’d been a thorn in his side for months. Ahsoka had specialized needs, compared to the rest of them, who were human—every time Anakin snuck her his rations, in an attempt to supplement what she wasn’t getting, he tried not to think about his mother doing the same for him. Anakin remembered, suddenly, vividly, the last time he had choked down a ration bar on Columex had been because Rex had split his own rations. Don’t start, General, he’d said. We should’ve been taking turns, giving the kid extra, anyway.
One day, my Captain, we’re going to take turns ripping Grievous’ guts out with our bare hands, Anakin had said. Rex’s only response had been a wry grin.
Some of what Anakin was thinking of must have shown on his face, because Obi-Wan’s expression turned grave. “Brutal, isn’t it,” he said. “Take a shower, Anakin.”
The fact that Obi-Wan had told him to do it almost made Anakin not want to, but his robes were stiff now and after weeks of spending most days soaked to the bone in pale gray mud and blood and rain, he was really enjoying the sudden luxury of clean robes on hand. The Republic fucking Navy doesn’t deal with this, he thought, bitterly, and set off to his rooms to drag out some clothes and start the shower. He flicked it on the hottest setting, naturally—at some point blackness consumed his vision, again, but instead of getting out he luxuriated a bit longer, sitting on the floor of the shower so he didn’t pass out. The heat give him a new excuse to be as light-headed and dizzy as he was. It occurred to him a long ways through that he ought to have taken off his prosthetic, cleaned the stump—it was habit, for Anakin, to simply leave it on at all times, even though that wasn’t the medical recommendation. It was better than getting caught one-handed—once he and Rex and a handful of other men had gotten outflanked and pinned to a hollowed-out former house by Separatists, and out of weapons and ammunition, Anakin had stripped his arm for parts and managed to get a couple pipe bombs out of it to thin out the horde. Dueling the droids that were left without both hands, though, had been taxing.
Anakin disconnected the nerve sensors—they were waterproof and pretty damn robust, otherwise his arm would’ve given out a long time ago—and then popped the arm off, scrubbing at the aching stump beneath, around the ports that rooted deeper into his arm and interfaced the prosthetic nerves with his real ones, and the main one at the center that rooted the prosthetic to his body. What was unfortunate about the prosthetic was that, despite the durability of durasteel, it acted like a lightning rod for electricity, and if there were two things Anakin did with any regularity it was either get blown up or get electrocuted; the stump of his arm already had pale, ropey scar tissue from the initial burn from the good Count’s lightsaber, but now after multiple doses of Sith Lightning and innumerable times at the end of electro-whips and electro-staffs and electro-anything, a lot of the scrawling, flowery pink-red scars seemed to center on the arm, though they crawled all over the rest of him, too, in weird formations.
He didn’t much care for looking at his severed arm. It reminded him of the embarrassment of his failure, and the burn that Obi-Wan had almost never acknowledged it since; privately, Anakin thought Obi-Wan was embarrassed, too, of how badly Anakin had failed on Geonosis. Embarrassed, too, to have three fourths of a Jedi for his lineage, rather than a whole one. He didn’t like the way the eyes of everyone at the Temple seemed to skitter down to it in what felt like disgust; at least the soldiers were fascinated by it, whenever he couldn’t stand to have the bulking glove on any longer and pulled it off. They liked to test what it could break. Just to startle them, Anakin had adjusted the grip strength for a night to crunch durasteel, to the crowing joy of a crowd. If I lose an arm, General, you owe me one of those, Rex had said, once, lit by the flickering light of a campfire on a frigid, rocky little world. Make it blue and white, though.
Captain, if you lose an arm, I’ll make you the best mechanical one the galaxy’s ever seen. And then I will put a flamethrower in it, because I know you.
Rex had liked that joke, and brayed a long laugh. Anakin had liked that a lot better than pretending the mechanical arm didn’t exist in the first place.
He flicked off the shower, when he was starting to remember the feeling of heat exhaustion—from his childhood, and worlds he’d fought battles on since. To give his arm the rare breather, he toweled off and got dressed one-handed and slowly, ran a hairbrush through his hair and brushed his teeth and deodorized and all of the things that had been foreign to him as a child, and were foreign again now; the cleanliness that made a person feel like a person, and the opportunity to wash the blood out from beneath their fingernails. The last technical leave he’d had—four days, after roughly five months at the front—Anakin had stumbled to Padmé’s apartment before anything else, numb and blind and sick to his stomach, more tired than he could explain. He never told her about the war, tried to wake up from his nightmares silently and choke on his own breath in her bathroom, tear out his hair curled up on the tile next to her sink—and it hadn’t been different, that night, but he couldn’t have hidden it even if he could avoid speaking of it. He was still wearing it, the mud and gore. When she realized that he could barely think long enough to speak—she’d spoken low words in albūl, the dead, ancient language of Naboo, disjointed lines from one of the epic poems of her homeworld that she had loved best, and led him off to the bathroom to undress him and tug him into her bathtub.
It was one of the most unspeakably intimate things Anakin had ever lived, and at some point he had stopped being unable to speak because of exhaustion and dread and horror and started being unable to speak because he was too fascinated by the closeness of her to even say a word. Her hands were deft and sure and she lathered soap through his hair—everything smelled like flowers, if Padmé had a say in it—and worked it in, rubbing his scalp, tracing shapes into it, her fingers trailing down his neck, gracing his spine and running over the lash scars that were still there, after all his life since. She’d used that lavender-colored body soap she had, and scrubbed the grime away, even over his hand, rubbing his knuckles—when he’d been able enough to croak out her name, she’d said, I kind of like this, you know. There’s a lot I can’t do, but I can do this. And you’re beautiful this way.
If Anakin closed his eyes, she was still touching him. He knew that if he went to her now he would never make it back for the war councils in the evening—he’d tried not thinking about her, but when she smiled it was divine, like a saccharine sort of happiness that was infectious. When Anakin smiled, there was just blood on his teeth. But she thought it was beautiful anyway.
When Anakin re-emerged, Obi-Wan was sat—again in that stupid sprawl, one ankle resting on his knee—tapping on a datapad.
“That Alderaanian author I like has released a new novel,” Obi-Wan said, by way of greeting, in that odd way he had of launching directly into conversations without preamble, “and—for one thing, she’s breaking her genre. I liked her thrillers, they were fairly good, but now she’s written a historical fantasy about the Jedi Lords, and I am at that divergent point where I cannot decide if I want to continue with the book or if I want to write her a strongly worded letter about how she’s bungled the entire tax system the Jedi Lords had in place. And included romance, which is an entire—other logistical nightmare.”
“You are cranky about—the tax system being incorrect?” Anakin asked, squinting.
Obi-Wan looked at him seriously. “Very much so. The taxes the Jedi Lords levied on their planets has historical significance, padawan, and theological significance. Those archaic laws are part of why you get a stipend from the Republic, and—”
“We went to the same history classes,” Anakin said. Once more, his heart pounded, hard and fast like some beast loping through his chest. “I do not want to hear this. I know this. It was agonizing the first time.”
Obi-Wan huffed. “If you simply must be difficult, I’ll stop. How are you feeling?”
Anakin shrugged deeper into his cloak, shuddering. The pins and needles feeling had returned, rippling over him, making his skin break out into gooseflesh. “Cold,” he said. “They do not make the Temple warm enough.”
Obi-Wan had cleared the table, and washed and put away the dishes—the couch had been resettled, the cloak Anakin had found tossed over him discarded into the laundry bin somewhere. Anakin crawled back onto the couch, shakily—trembling, again, to the point that his hand was nearly useless and he braced himself with his metal one—and laid his head into his folded arms, groaning as the sudden darkness alleviated the pressure and tension and ache in his skull. He sucked in a few breaths, trying to assuage how short of it he felt, and idly wondered how taking a shower had exhausted him to the point where he wanted to sleep for the next hour when three days ago he had ran four miles full-tilt through Columex’s jungle to get to the ridge where tanks had been positioned to shell them from up high. Almost as if the memory had caused it, a muscle spasm rocked through Anakin’s leg, twisting and painful and Anakin hissed soundlessly into the sleeve of his cloak against it. They kept occurring. It unsettled him and he didn’t know why.
“They make this Temple too warm, actually,” Obi-Wan groused.
“Liar,” Anakin grunted. The buzzing in his ears ratcheted up louder; it sounded like the buzzing of insects. His chest twisted hard, aching again. “Everything is exhausting,” he said, finally.
Obi-Wan hummed in sympathy. “I understand.”
“How long have you been—here?” Anakin asked, haltingly.
“A week,” Obi-Wan said. “I have two more. It is something of a hybrid between true leave and paperwork duties, as it were.”
Anakin swallowed back an unsatisfying breath—the 501st and the 212th had been separated for months, split between the different fires in the Outer Rim that needed them. He missed Obi-Wan like a part of him. He missed Obi-Wan so badly the lack of his old Master’s steadying presence was like a wound, tearing itself open further and further the less he saw of Obi-Wan, the more Anakin couldn’t turn his head and know that his Master had his back. Anakin couldn’t very well ask that the Council pair them together again—but he wanted to, desperately, even as pathetic as it was. And pathetic it was, to reach for Obi-Wan when Obi-Wan didn’t really desire to reach back. The new relief of being near Obi-Wan, of finally feeling somewhat safe, finally feeling like the pressure wasn’t his and his alone, was enough that he could’ve cried for it, then. But the preemptive grief he had of the day he’d have to part ways with Obi-Wan again, for suns knew only how long, stabbed at him and for a moment it was everything he could do to keep from crying into his folded arms. Two weeks would have to be enough, for that time with Obi-Wan to make him—sane, again. To maybe take away the blood-curdling misery he couldn’t shake anymore, the what’s the point that blended with I want this to end. He wanted Obi-Wan to press his hand to Anakin’s chest again. He wanted Obi-Wan to fix it, and couldn’t define what it was at all. I’m drowning, he wanted to say. Can you tell if it’s water or if it’s blood?
“Did Ahsoka make it to her lessons?” Obi-Wan asked.
Anakin swallowed hard against the ice in his throat. I don’t know, because I wasn’t awake to see her off, and I did not even hear her leave, because I am a horrible teacher, he thought. “I don’t know,” he said.
Obi-Wan tilted his head. “You were asleep, then?”
“I was supposed to speak to her in the morning about her skiving,” Anakin said. Simultaneously he didn’t want to address it—the thought of standing up alone made him sink deeper into the couch, much less trying to formulate a serious lecture—but he knew Ahsoka, and Ahsoka didn’t skirt responsibility because she simply wanted to. He hadn’t, either; Anakin had skipped his classes plenty, trying to bury the fear that poisoned his thoughts in something that moved faster, something that moved too fast for him to get a chance to think. Burying his loneliness and the way he flinched at shadows beneath full-throttle speed, in all manner of illegal racing circuits, taking turns too quickly half-hoping they’d have to pick the pieces of his charred corpse out of the wreck, just so he didn’t have to disappoint Obi-Wan again when he came back to the Temple at four in the morning, bruised and covered in engine grease with nothing to show for it but an empty little victory and the crushing knowledge that there was nothing he could pilot fast enough to outrun everything that he was.
Anakin wondered if Obi-Wan ever knew that, that it hadn’t been the responsibilities Anakin was trying to outrun all the time; it was the fact that he flinched when Obi-Wan moved too quickly, that there was a mottled brand on his shoulder of Gardulla’s crest beneath lashes a decade old, and those scars spewed poison into him, and as many times as he had flicked open a pocketknife and thought about it he’d never be able to reach to cut them off. That sometimes he woke up in the night, fear like a sick living thing curling around him, and scrubbed their quarters top to bottom until everything gleamed, until the sun was rising and he was scrubbing at imaginary stains and the cleaning chemicals had burned through his sinuses—and then Obi-Wan would drowsily ask him what he was doing, when he rose, and Anakin would choke out something like I couldn’t sleep, when the real answer was I left a mug on the center table, and for five hours I convinced myself that you would beat me blind in the morning if I did not make it up to you.
Obi-Wan never would, Anakin knew, because Obi-Wan Kenobi entirely lacked malevolence—if he had ever felt that baying desire for the most evil kind of justice, if he had ever wanted revenge so badly he would have cracked skulls and spines trying to carve his grief in bodies, Anakin never knew of it. Anakin would have bet his own freedom that Obi-Wan Kenobi had never wanted to carve how much he hated something into its skin, and never would—it had nothing to do with Anakin, and everything to do with Obi-Wan, that stubborn endurance that scaled cliffs horns first, shouldering the bitter wind with not even a flicker of complaint. But Anakin had learned to call the man his Master, and his masters, and his slavedrivers and his taskmasters had all wanted the sick joy of watching something bleed. Anakin was more like them, he thought, than he ever was Obi-Wan, even with over a decade away from the desert—but the sun had bleached him dry, somewhere along the line. The scars, and their poison. But they couldn’t be cut off, and they would just keep leaking poison, and then he would be nothing but a fiery hot burn scar from a fiery hot brand.
“And you were asleep,” Obi-Wan repeated.
“Tell me of my failures one more time and I’ll take it out on your neck. Your soon-to-be-broken neck, I mean.”
Obi-Wan snorted, like Anakin’s ire was beneath him. “It’s not me commenting on your failures, Anakin. Sometimes you are so very prickly. I’m merely trying to assess the situation.”
Anakin twisted his head so he was glaring at Obi-Wan from his folded arms, even though his headache protested violently. “Prickly?”
Obi-Wan gestured at him. “You are the very image of prickly at this precise moment, do not even try to deny it. You have been at the front practically nonstop for the better part of a year, do you think I am angry that you wanted rest? Please, by all means. What in the galaxy has made you think anyone is going to judge you for that?”
Anakin jolted, fire trickling low in his belly. He hid his face in his folded arms, again, half afraid he would start crying from frustration. “You act like—like it’s mad, of me. If I fell asleep when I was working as a child I got an electrified bantha prod held to my back until I remembered why I shouldn’t. I remembered quickly, but it was—it was left there, a while, for—good measure.”
Why did I say that, he thought, his heart pounding again like it was trying to tear out of Anakin’s chest. The ache in him twisted, shuddered, Anakin breathing hard against it, though he could never seem to get his lungs to fill quite enough.
It was a long moment after, when the couch at Anakin’s side dipped, and Obi-Wan’s back was warm next to him. “Let me see something,” Obi-Wan said, softly.
“If you want to see the fucking scars, Obi-Wan, I will hit you instead,” Anakin growled.
He could feel Obi-Wan’s flinch, the touch of shame that brushed the Force. “No,” Obi-Wan said. “Not—that is not what I was—no, Anakin. But you’re shivering again. On your side, please.”
“I hate you,” Anakin hissed, but he twisted anyway, trying to scowl when Obi-Wan’s cool hand cupped his forehead. Obi-Wan had checked him for a fever a hundred times, and every time he was right; he had an uncanny ability of predicting when Anakin was ill better than Anakin could.
Obi-Wan sighed, and dropped his head. “You do have a temperature,” he said. “I don’t think it’s serious, but—were you cleared for contagions after you left Columex?”
“Yes,” Anakin said, not because he remembered the process, but because he remembered Kix swearing something—something. He had seen Kix. He and Ahsoka both had, that much he knew.
“Sometimes exhaustion brings with it a fever,” Obi-Wan said, tiredly. “I can get you a fever reducer. You need to drink more water, certainly. But the primary answer is still rest.”
“Do I need more, truthfully.”
“If you think one day makes up for months of wear, you’re mad,” Obi-Wan said.
And as much as Anakin didn’t mean to, he slipped off into an uneasy sleep, and Obi-Wan’s hand never seemed to leave his shoulder, one warm and bright point in all the world.