Chapter Text
You remember the sand and the heat of the twin suns, the rock in the distance.
You had journeyed out here together, deep into the uncharted deserts as the Empire’s sweeps of the system lately has become more insistent. It was easier to hike into the desert for a few days to hide and to wait it out.
He had seen the rock first and gestured to it as a point of interest. It was a strange sight, grey where everything else around you were rich red tones. As the eopi you were riding rambled her way towards it you could see that it looked fabricated, made by something sentient, whereas everything else around you had been carved by time. The structure was roughly circular, glittering and yet somehow still rough-hewn, it looked like a window in the desert.
Together you had looked closer but then only you had laid a hand upon its surface and it had spoken to you.
—---
Your head was pounding, everything was dark. Coming to, you groaned and shifted and could feel the ground beneath you was hard and cool. When you did try to open your eyes the light hurt so badly you decided to allow yourself to just be still for a moment. Muffled sounds around you were getting louder, then you could feel hands trying to lift you, your own legs failing to work, then being lifted fully by those same hands. There was no struggle and you relaxed into the hold, after all, the last thing you remember, you had been with the person you trusted the most in the Galaxy.
Waking again an indeterminate time later you realise you are in a medbay.
"This isn't Tatooine," is the first thought, everything is too clean, too cool and – Oh Stars! The window! You rush to sit up, scrabbling at the sheets and the wires connecting you to the monitors to get a better look. It's Coruscant, unmistakably so. You'd spent so many years here you'd know the sky, the architecture in an instant.
No no no nonononnoo – you can feel the panic swelling, the drip of it in your stomach, the tightness in your chest – they got you! After all these years of running, of hiding, for nothing! The Empire finally got you. You are scrambling now, pulling out wires, eyes searching frantically for an exit and no no no no no no, where was? The door slides open.
There he was. Your eyes dart over him looking for injuries, for weapons, for Stormtroopers running up behind him. You see his blue eyes widen slightly at your state of disarray and he holds his hands up as if to calm a skittish creature. He doesn’t look right. You still, and feel a frown forming on your face.
"Miss, are you quite alright? You were found on the steps of the temple, please be calm, you are safe."
You are breathing fast, frozen. It's not him. It's not him! But – it is?
"I-I," you stutter and recognise the look he gives you, he's projecting his calm to you, so you decide to let him, to take stock of the situation. Taking a deep breath out you gather yourself.
"Thank you, B-Ob-M-Master Kenobi," okay that bit was hard, "I seem to be having trouble remembering how I got here," he's still projecting his calm aura to you, it helps. "Would you be so kind as to tell me the day?"
Master Kenobi tells you and you recognise it as a day about two years before the fall of the Republic. You try to disguise your reaction, it’s not, of course, entirely successful so you feign fatigue and lay back down staring at the ceiling.
"Is everything alright?" He comes closer to the bedside and so you turn your head to look at him.
He's beautiful just as you've always told him he is, he looks put together in his Jedi robes and white GAR bracers. You can tell your eyes are searching his face but you can't stop, he looks so different too. Younger, surer - less sad around the eyes. You stop looking.
"Sorry, Master, I didn't wish to alarm you. I'm just feeling lightheaded, I'll take some time to rest then make my way home if that's okay?"
"Please, take the time you need and be sure to take care in the future. If you do need our assistance we are happy to provide it." You think you hear the slight frown in his voice when you don't respond but after a pause he leaves and you let out a breath you didn't know you'd been holding.
—---
The interaction helps you take stock of your situation, that it was now nearly 10 years from when you remembered touching the strange rock. You quickly find a mirror and a datapad. So yes, you look as you did at this time. It’s strange to see your younger self looking back at you, hair with less gray, (the war had added more than its fair share) less lines around the face. Your clothes are colourful and elaborate instead of earth coloured robes, worn mostly for camouflage. Running your hands over your overcoat you find your ID disc attached to the holokey for your apartment. At this time in your life you had been secretary to the Senator of your home planet Keitum, so this means you have a modest apartment near the Senate provided for you.
ID secured, you find your shoes before signing out of medical. They let you leave without much fuss as you aren’t injured, but in the kind condescension of Jedi, impress on you that they can help any trouble you are in. You reassure them that you are fine, likely just overworked and they believe you. You don't see Obi-Wan on the way out and if you are honest with yourself you are relieved.
Using mass transportation after living as a hermit for years is a lesson in overstimulation but eventually, you arrive at your apartment and everything is just as you left it. Some small changes, it's just over two years until you flee this place in the middle of the night but it's the same, it smells the same. You walk around touching the small objects of your life, your work files are all still on your desk too. The holoprojector sits on the coffee table and it wasn't until you spotted it that you remember that you can call your family, the Empire aren't hunting you now, curling up into yourself on the chair beside it seems like a good idea right now, so you do and you cry.
—---
You are rocking in the hammock of your garden watching the twin suns set between the outbuildings, pillowed on Obi-Wan’s chest, nose nestled into his beard, smelling amber and oud. His arm is around you, gently stroking his fingers along your forearm and he speaks to you softly. This is the night he had explained to you his theory that all beings could sense the Force, the sensitivity just turned higher for some. He sounds so sure and happy of his connection to the universe, and in turn, his connection to you. You turn your face upwards to him and he looks at you, a soft smile on both your faces. The moment is broken by a loud voice booming directly into your head ‘WHAT DO YOU….’
You wake up, alone in your living room. The window shows the sun is rising on Coruscant and speeders glide past the windows. A dream then.
—---
Another day goes by, and you have the presence of mind to call out sick to your duties. It's time to get yourself together, your parents had always said you were pragmatic and if any situation called for you to look at it logically, this was it. With reflection, maybe you should have just told Obi-Wan the truth in the medbay but you shake your head. You would have just been sent for an extended stay with the mind healers. You need a plan, something concrete and so you gather some flimsi and weigh your options:
Option 1:
You tell the Jedi council absolutely everything you know about the war, the end of it, everything. Obi-Wan confided in you over the years (you have a good memory there’s a lot of very sensitive information in your head). Maybe you could change history if they believe you - save all those lives.
Option 2:
You don't...do...that....
You could wait this out. Do your time. Let events play out as destiny intended and you go back to your life on Tatooine with...with...your husband...
Just thinking of him you can't control the sob, Gods you miss him. You hadn't really allowed yourself to look at what you lost when you were transported here but - Stars! - Obi-Wan! He must think you are dead, lost to that strange rock in the desert. You were coming up to your wedding anniversary, as happy as you could be under the weight of the grief after the fall, love had come slowly and yet so quickly to you, brought together by happenstance.
You think you could do it, you resolve, you could wait years to be with him. Your body is the same it had been before so you would even be the same age, a blip in time to wait for him.
The Kenobi of this era has passed you in hallways and listened to you in meetings and never once had either of you looked closely at the other. You had come to terms with your grief, the loss of everything, you wanted to go Home!
So...you don’t call your family, or any of your friends (the ones you thought lost) and decide to go back to work. There are meetings and functions and events to help with, memos to write, good busy work and you'd done it all before you realise with a smile, you can keep your head down, let it pass you by, get back to your life.
—---
Three days of this and you are walking to your next meeting in the Senate building, head down in a datapad that you almost run headlong into him.
Obi-Wan is walking down the corridor shoulder to shoulder with Anakin Skywalker when you have to stop short to avoid running into him.
"Woah there, apologies Miss, I was not minding myself."
You forgot how condescending he was a Jedi Master/General back in the day. On a whim you offer your hand and name.
"I should also be looking where I'm going General, if you'll excuse me." You slip past him, avoiding eye contact, and get away thinking that had gone as well as it could, best to avoid him while you wait to get home, until you hear Anakin bold as brass.
"Ooooh cold Master, I thought all the staff thought you walked on sunbeams?"
'"Quiet Anakin," Obi-Wan chortles....you stop, in all your years together and you're not sure he ever laughed like that. He was always so reserved, protective of his amusement.
A glance back confirms they are already moving on but the small interaction rocks your resolve.
—---
That night you remember your wedding.
It had been beautiful and simple - stood together in the doorway of the house you shared, with your friends and neighbours there. Hands bound together with rough woven cloth, dyed the blue of his eyes. You had fashioned matching rings (metallurgy was a new hobby of yours) using the same alloy as his lightsaber. His eyes had briefly darted to where it was hidden, a moment of panic when you presented them and calmed when you whispered that you didn't actually use any parts of it to make them. They were carefully scavenged from junk shops over several months. He had smiled at you then.
You intended them as a reminder to him that he was a Jedi even if he could no longer carry his lightsaber. Your vows too were also written with this in mind, you had discussed them at length, being a Jedi was the core of his being, something he would not give up, and something you would not ask of him. He had offered himself to the Order first, made vows to them first. You understood, and had written these words and presented them for approval. Obi-Wan was not a man who easily gave into emotion but he had cried with the words in hand.
"I promise to love you selflessly and not before duty." You are still sure it sounded unromantic to those gathered, but you knew this was the only way he could love you and the only way you wanted him to, while retaining himself. As for you, you understood at that time the duty he meant and had taken it on yourself too and so the same was true for you.
It was this vow that you thought of sitting alone in your cold, quiet apartment, as you stared at the place on your finger where your wedding ring no longer was. You still loved him and so you had to continue to love him selflessly and that meant you had to try and change the war.
Obi-Wan would do it. He wouldn't just sit and wait to get back to you. Duty before love.
So you make an appointment for a private audience with Master Kenobi knowing that now you would never go home - if you could prevent the fall of the Republic, the death of Anakin, then he would never have need to leave the order, you would never meet in grief and circumstance on Tatooine and he would never love you.