what a drag to love you like I do

by NatalieK

Summary:

Anakin has taken to not leaving his room after being discharged from the Halls of Healing following his amputation. Obi-Wan aches as he watches him moping around and tries not to wince at the desolation that radiates from him. All of his attempts to discuss the battle, the injury and the future fall on deaf ears. So he’s going to make tea, he supposes. A tried and tested method. No matter how angry or upset Anakin is, no matter how sad, he’s never ignored Obi-Wan when he made him tea.

Notes:

title from Billie Eilish’s Halley’s Comet

~

The Council meeting drags on and on and on. When they finally do agree on a lunch break, Obi-Wan heads back to his quarters. It’s a spur of a moment decision, or so he tells himself. He definitely doesn’t mean to check on Anakin. He would be loath to admit that his behaviour has in any way changed ever since Anakin lost his arm over a week ago.

After their encounter with Dooku, Anakin spent two days in the Halls of Healing. At the end of his stay, the healers, satisfied with his recovery, wanted to immediately start discussing prosthetics options, at which point Anakin thanked them and promised he’d be in touch as he swiftly walked out the door, leaving Obi-Wan behind, frowning and having to make excuses to the healers. Anakin went straight to their quarters, to his room, and hasn’t left the place since. Obi-Wan has spent the last week tiptoeing around their place, discomfitted by the ear-piercing lack of sounds coming out of Anakin’s room.

Anakin’s room. A place which you could always count on, for a decade now, to be filled with some sound or other – clanking and whirring and beeping and buzzing and trashing and swearing – one by one or in various combinations, but always something coming from behind that door.

And now, silence.

Anakin’s room. Always a place of seeming disarray, at least to the uninitiated, not dissimilar to an actual battlefield with all the bits and bobs littering the floor and every other surface available and daring any potential arrivals to enter and attempt to find a safe passage through the clutter without potentially triggering some kind of chain reaction leading to catastrophes of scales yet unimaginable.

These days, Obi-Wan tries to engage Anakin in conversation on the rare occasions he leaves his room, usually to scour the kitchen for food, with little success. All of his attempts to discuss the battle, the injury and the future have been falling on deaf ears. The few times he knocked on his door and was admitted by a lukewarm “yes…?”, Anakin was either curled up in bed, buried under a pile of blankets, or sitting on the windowsill with his forehead pressed to the window, staring dejectedly at everything that’s happening in the big out there – without him. All his semifinished droid projects have been unceremoniously swept to the side of the room. Their creator one hand short of working on them.

Anakin’s lightsaber has been lying on Obi-Wan’s bedside table ever since he came to pick him up from the Halls of Healing. Anakin left it behind, and so the healer gave it to Obi-Wan, who placed it in the pocket of his robe and held onto it almost reverently the whole walk back home. He meant to return it to him immediately, but Anakin had already disappeared to his room, leaving a cloud of misery in his wake, the bond between them quiet and fragile, and somehow, every day, it gets harder and harder to bring it up. Obi-Wan supposes it’s a fitting punishment for his failure to keep his Padawan out of harm. Lying there on Obi-Wan’s bedside table, the saber is the last thing he sees every night, the first thing he sees upon waking every morning… its own kind of torture. Anakin hasn’t asked for it back, yet. Of course he hasn’t.

Until today, Obi-Wan’s presence was required only infrequently by the Council. Or rather, Obi-Wan took Windu aside the day of Anakin’s discharge from the Halls of Healing and asked him for – for want of a better word – leniency in the following days, while his Padawan was recovering. He would usually hurry to a meeting and then hurry back, not wanting to let Anakin out of his sight for too long. Or more precisely, not wanting to stop guarding Anakin’s closed, silent door for too long. He’d sit in the kitchen or in the living room, poring over reports on his datapad, trying to focus, trying not to fret too much about the starting war, about Anakin’s injury and mental state.

Trying not to think about the inevitable outcome of the following three factors:

1) a war has just started,
2) many Jedi Knights died on Geonosis, leaving the Order dreadfully shortstaffed in a time of crisis,
3) and most importantly, his Padawan, in spite of his recklessness and at times childishness, is now an adult and quite capable, and has been known to be overeager to prove himself.

Obi-Wan unsuccessfully tries not to worry that many Padawans are about to be knighted prematurely, and worries only about their readiness and safety, and is not at all bothered by the fact that Anakin will, sooner rather than later, be taken away from him. His constant companion of a decade, his roommate, his charge, his brother-in-arms, his dearest friend.

With Anakin knighted, the place he calls home will be even more empty and quiet than it has been in the past week, and what a dreary thought that is.

So now, when Obi-Wan returns to their quarters from the first all-day Council meeting he agreed to, he fully expects the tense silence, the acute sadness permeating the place, and the door to Anakin’s room closed.

What he doesn’t expect, as the door swings open, is Anakin sprawled on the living room couch laughing out loud as Quinlan Vos sits next to him, gesturing wildly, seemingly in the middle of telling a story.

Trying to get his bearings, in the split second before the two of them acknowledge him, Obi-Wan notices several things. Quinlan seems quite comfortable on his couch, grinning, body language open, a couple of new scars decorating his arms and face. Anakin looks – relaxed, with his head tilted back on the backrest and his face scrunched up with laughter and feet resting on the coffee table. He’s still wearing his sleep clothes like he has been for days now and the stump of his right arm is hidden in the long, wide, flowing sleeve of his shirt. It looks like nothing bad has ever happened to him, and he looks so different from the grieving young man of the past days, that Obi-Wan’s breath is momentarily taken away.

Then he blinks and sees the empty bottles of beer on the coffee table in front of both of them. There’s at least half a dozen on Anakin’s side of the table alone, and –

what in the actual fu –

“Obi-Wan!” Quinlan stops his storytelling mid-sentence and turns towards him, the echo of Anakin’s drunken laughter still ringing loud in the room. “So nice of you to finally show up! I was just keeping Skywalker company. Looking after him.”

“Looking after him?” Obi-Wan raises his eyebrows and pointedly looks at all the bottles and oh, there are so many of them.

Anakin has gone quiet in the meantime, the laughter gone from his face in an instant, only to be replaced by a frown. He stares at the floor and won’t meet his eyes. His face is slightly flushed, his eyes glassy.

“Come on, don’t look at us like that. I know what’s on your mind. This is just like –” and here Quinlan looks back at Anakin, “see, this is just like that time I was telling you about, when your Master and I were sent to one of the lower levels to go undercover at this pleasure house and he was the one who was supposed to –”

“Quinlan, can I talk to you for a minute?” Obi-Wan wills the tone of his voice to remain level. “Outside?” He glances at the door meaningfully.

Anakin snorts and rolls his eyes. He instinctively moves his arm as if intending to cross his arms over his chest, but of course, he cannot, so he aborts the movement midway and only frowns harder. He looks at Obi-Wan and stares daggers at him.

Quinlan regards the two of them and hesitates, then clears his throat and without another word, rises to his feet and follows Obi-Wan to the door. Once he’s in the doorway, over his shoulder he mutters: “Take care, Skywalker.”

The door closes quietly and Obi-Wan turns to face Quinlan.

“So let me get this right. I don’t see you or hear from you for months, and then you suddenly appear and,” Obi-Wan glances at his holowatch, “just after noon on a random Monday you get my injured, grieving, barely adult Padawan drunk?”

Quinlan leans against the wall and crosses his arms over his chest. “Excuse me? Your boy,” he raises his eyebrows and gestures at the closed door, “was already well on his way to shitfaced when I came around. I just kept him company, and honestly, drank some of the booze he would have drunk himself otherwise. Oh, by the way, I’d check the place for more stuff. He brought all that shit from his room.”

“Anakin doesn’t –” he shakes his head. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

Quinlan shrugs and points skyward as if indicating some higher entity. “Summoned by the Council. Didn’t want to see their sour faces straight away, so I came to see you first, and you weren’t here. The boy practically dragged me inside. I think he was glad to see me.” He pauses, then lowers his voice a notch. “Go to the Halls of Healing with him tomorrow. To get fitted for a prosthetic. He doesn’t want to go alone.”

Halls of –

“How – what did you tell him?”

“What he needed to hear.”

Obi-Wan stares at him quizzically. Quinlan looks back at him, and something passes between them that Obi-Wan doesn’t quite understand. Then Quinlan’s comlink beeps, and he glances at it, makes a face and clasps Obi-Wan’s shoulder for a second before leaving.

“Well, let’s get this over with. Catch up another time, then. Go and deal with your boy. And stay safe.”

He leaves Obi-Wan standing there, speechless and wondering how to approach the miserable drunk man behind the closed door.

It’s not the first time Anakin got drunk, of course not. He’s nineteen and living in what is basically a monastery. Of course there have been times of rebellion and –

~

The first time Anakin got drunk was when he was fifteen years old. That evening, Anakin announced he was going to the Archives to work on a group project with a couple of other Padawans, and Obi-Wan, although sensing untruth, didn’t object. It was the first time Anakin was out of Obi-Wan’s sight for the night, baring various overnight stays in the Halls of Healing or missions he had to travel to without Anakin. After Anakin left, Obi-Wan made himself a cup of tea and sat down in the living room with his datapad, delighted at having the opportunity to catch up on some reading, intending to make the most of an evening free from the pubescent, loud and nearly always annoyed boy. To his discontent, he found himself unable to focus. The place was somehow too quiet. Too empty.

It was infuriating.

He went to bed early and instead stared at the ceiling for hours. At some point during the night, there were sounds at the door to their shared quarters. At first, there was a muffled thump, then the door banged open loudly, and what followed was the unmistakable sound of drunken loud whispers and what had to be several young people giggling and shushing each other.

Obi-Wan was fiercely glad, then, though he would never admit that to anyone. Because of his unusual arrival to the Order and due to his special predispositions, Anakin always struggled to find friends, to fit in among his peers, and Obi-Wan felt deeply happy at discovering that Anakin could still have this, still could experience something so common to people growing up outside the Order, to discover the fleeting joy alcohol could provide and to revel in the easy companionship of people of his age.

In the end, the door closed and Obi-Wan held his breath and fought a smile as he listened to Anakin clumsily creeping through the hall and the living room, dragging his feet and stumbling into furniture. Then, a yelp of pain, a loud thud, some astonishingly vulgar swearing, and then the world shimmered imperceptibly as Anakin misused the Force and with a gesture turned the lights on to make his way through the place less hazardous. He stopped in front of Obi-Wan’s door. There was silence for a while, and then, absurdly polite and out of place, came quiet knocking.

“Yes, Anakin?” He leaned up onto his elbows.

Anakin opened the door. His silhouette, framed by the light coming from the living room, swayed a bit, until he leaned against the doorframe to steady himself. His tabards were loose, untucked from his obi, and for some reason, he was wearing only one boot.

“Master? I’m back,” he whispered. It was unclear for whose benefit he whispered. “We, umm, didn’t actually work on a project. I got a bit drunk. But don’t worry, we were always in a group and looking out for each other.” He glanced down. ”Oh, and I lost one shoe.” He was slurring his words a little bit, but otherwise appeared quite lucid.

Obi-Wan dragged his fingers across his face. “That’s fine. Did you have fun?”

Anakin smirked and ducked his head.

“If you meet Master Nu tomorrow, whatever she tells you, she’s – she’s exaggerating.”

Obi-Wan smiled. “Alright.”

Anakin nodded and remained standing there, showing no intention of going away.

“Are you alright?”

Anakin shrugged. “It was fun at first, I think? A thrill. Now everything seems – weird. The Force feels off, doesn’t it? Like, real fucked up. When you’re drunk. I don’t – I don’t know if I like it.”

“That’s understandable.” Young Force-sensitives often struggled with alcohol, not having yet learned to use the Force to detoxify their body and not being used to the way it affected their interaction with the Force. “You’re still young. You shouldn’t be drinking at all, at your age. You don’t have to drink, ever, if you don’t enjoy the consequences. But please do drink some water now before you go to sleep.”

Anakin hummed. He stood there a while longer and eventually, without another word, left, the door closing softly after him.

Obi-Wan felt a bit foolish, then. Like a mother hen, reveling in the sense of contentment from having his Padawan back home where he could take care of him, safe and sound. The absurdity of the knowledge of how safe Anakin actually was the whole night, on Temple grounds and accompanied by his peers, compared to the potential danger of some of the missions they went on together, was not lost on him, but still.

He barely had a couple of minutes to enjoy this peace of mind when the door opened again, this time without knocking, and Anakin came in, wearing his sleep clothes. He turned on the bedside table lamp to a low, muted setting with a wave of his arm and came to stand by the foot of the bed. Then he impatiently gestured with his arms for Obi-Wan to move over.

“Anakin –” he sighed.

“Come on, then,” Anakin pleaded.

Obi-Wan shifted to the side and moved all the way to the edge of the bed, until he felt the coldness of the wall against his back.

“No, you go to the other side,” Anakin whined, like it was obvious, like such a mistake could only be made by the most stupid of people and Obi-Wan sure was one of them.

“Honestly, Anakin,” but he gave up seeing the frown on Anakin’s face and obligingly moved to the other side of the bed, feeling deeply undignified, rolling around the bed like a giant sentient worm.

Anakin clumsily climbed up at the foot of the bed and crawled up, getting tangled in the bedcovers. Then he finally plopped down, turned onto his side with the wall at his back and facing Obi-Wan, dragged the bedcovers all the way up to his chin and closed his eyes.

Obi-Wan waited a bit and then sent a gentle question at him through their bond.

“The Force is too quiet... It’s like the connection got numbed by the drink. While I was with the others, it was easy to ignore, but – I feel like I’m blind. Defenseless. I don’t want to be alone right now,” he mumbled, the last couple of words barely intelligible.

Insisting on lying with his back to the wall, on putting Obi-Wan between himself and any potential harm that could come through the door…

Lying opposite him, a foot of empty space between them, studying Anakin’s face drowning in the shadows cast by the muted lamp light, Obi-Wan felt thrown. Anakin at fifteen years of age rarely admitted such vulnerability. He left most of that behind the first year or two after he came to the Order. Once he got sober, he’d be mortified, if he remembered it, that is.

All of a sudden, Obi-Wan felt an urge to reach out and comfort him. To run his fingers through his hair, to clasp his shoulder firmly to calm him. To drag him close and tuck his head under his chin, to rub his back soothingly, like he used to do when Anakin was a little boy. To pour the warmth of assurance into him, to assure him that he’s not alone, that he’s safe, that Obi-Wan will protect him from anyone and anything until his dying breath.

Perturbed by this sudden onslaught of wants, he shied away from the quiet tender intensity of the moment and went instead for what was safe and familiar.

“If you throw up in my bed, I’m kicking you out, no matter how miserable you are.”

With his eyes still closed, Anakin smiled, then. It was a small affair, tired and hazy, strangely grown up and wistful.

“That’s fair.”

Obi-Wan sighed again, and with an intent thought and the smallest movement of his index and middlefinger, he turned off the lamp.

With a surprising burst of energy, Anakin threw his arm out and the lamp flickered back on. Eyes wide open with his pupils dilated and panic on his face, he met Obi-Wan’s gaze.

“Can we keep it on?” The panic was quickly replaced by embarrassment. “Please?”

Obi-Wan only stared at him. He guessed it made sense that someone so very Force-sensitive, so very much used to the Force being loud and ever-present, struggled when suddenly, it was not. In a way, it was like losing one sense and trying to compensate for it with the others, in any way possible. Keeping the light on. Seeking the company of others. Putting human shields between himself and potential danger.

“Of course,” he said, calm as can be.

Anakin nodded and closed his eyes again.

“I don’t sense any disturbance in the Force. No one’s coming for us tonight.”

Anakin made no reply and only burrowed his chin deeper into the blanket.

And if Obi-Wan stayed up until dawn to make sure of it, well, no one ever had to know.

~

The way Anakin got drunk today, though, feels very different. It did not start as a joyful act of rebellion, fueled by the desire to experience a taste of adulthood. It’s not a rascally, stupid thing to be laughed at the next morning. No. It feels awfully like a coping mechanism.

When the sound of Quinlan’s steps fades away, Obi-Wan takes a deep breath and heads back inside. Anakin has curled up on the couch with his face to the backrest. While he talked to Quinlan in the hallway, the last still half-full bottle has, courtesy of Anakin, joined the ranks of its many empty fellows on the coffee table. Obi-Wan clicks his tongue, marches to it and picks it up, chaotically yet determinedly gathers all the bottles in his arms and marches to the kitchen to get rid of them. Then he comes back and stops in the middle of the room. He stares at Anakin’s back for a minute. It doesn’t matter that Anakin doesn’t see him. He knows he can feel it. He knows he’s gonna crack. Obi-Wan’s got years of experience with this, after all.

An annoyed huff. “Don’t look at me like that. You – you were supposed to be in the Council meeting the whole day. I thought I’d get shitfaced early and go back to bed before you returned.”

Obi-Wan scoffs. “Oh, I’m sorry, am I supposed to apologize for ruining your plans?”

“Mm. Screw you.” And there is actual venom in his words. “I can barely breathe around here with your constant hovering. Your worrying is debilitating. I wanted one quiet night, one night without the Force, without sensing your anxiety and feeling even worse because of it.”

Oh.

Obi-Wan simply supposed that he got drunk because he didn’t want to think about his injury for a bit. It never crossed his mind that the intensity of his feelings leaked through his shielding and aggravated his despair.

He takes a step closer. “I’m sorry.” Still, Anakin won’t face him. He gazes at the back of his head intently.

“I – when did you even – how did you get so much alcohol?”

“Um, I lost my arm, not my legs?” The tone of his voice makes it clear that the words are you stupid? were omitted, but it was a close thing.

Obi-Wan sighs.

“Anakin, you know substances are never a solution to a problem, right? No matter how dire a situation is. It’s merely a way of temporarily forgetting it, and I’d hate –”

“Yes, Master.” A dramatic sigh.

“I know you’re not a child anymore, but –”

“Whatever you’re going to say, I’ve heard it a hundred times,” Anakin says, no longer angry, but just tired.

Silence as Obi-Wan stands there and looks at Anakin’s hunched back, wordlessly willing him to turn around, to talk to him. When that doesn’t work, he heads to the kitchen and decides to let the familiar ritual of making tea steady him.

He fills the kettle and switches the stove on. He runs his hand along his collection of tea leaves, contemplating, until he finds the tin of tea blend he’s looking for. The lid sticks for a second and then gives with a soft wooden scrape, and he scoops the right amount of leaves and as the water comes to a boil, drops them in the kettle. With two well-used cups at the ready, he leans against the counter and with his eyes closed, patiently counts his heartbeats until it’s time. As he pours the tea, holding onto the warm handle, the comforting scent rises and fills the room.

He carries both cups to the living room. He places one on the coffee table in front of Anakin, then backtracks a few steps and settles in the armchair. He cradles his own cup in his palms and looks into the dark liquid, then glances at Anakin’s back, opens his mouth to speak, abruptly changes his mind and looks back into the cup. He wants to say something, wants to say so many things, but has no idea how to go about it. The regret that Anakin’s suffering and that he got hurt so terribly in the first place on Obi-Wan’s watch, the longing for him to get back to the fearless loud blazing spitfire that he is; all of Obi-Wan’s thoughts, in essence, coalesce into one all-encompassing one.

I love you so dreadfully.

So he doesn’t speak. He sits there quietly for a while, watching the steam slowly rising from the cup, thin threads drifting upwards before curling back on themselves, twisting, stretching, catching light for a split second, and finally disappearing into thin air.

Finally, hesitantly, Obi-Wan breaks silence: “I thought you didn’t like drinking alcohol? Didn’t like how it makes you feel?” His own voice sounds foreign to him. Too soft. Bordering on aching.

Anakin groans and with a seemingly enormous effort, rolls over and sits back up.

“I don’t,” he replies apathetically as he holds his fingers to his temple and winces. Then he leans forward and takes the cup of tea in his hand. He glances at Obi-Wan. “I don’t really like tea either, and, well…” He blows on the tea before he takes a sip, and he just about manages not to grimace.

It’s become a habit fairly early on. If they’re both home, Obi-Wan always makes two cups of tea. Always. Anakin never finishes his, mostly just sips experimentally to show his appreciation, to confirm that nope, this is still disgusting, and then leaves it to go cold. Obi-Wan doesn’t mind. He likes having someone to make tea for.

Balancing the cup on his knee and worrying the handle with his fingertips, letting his fingernails catch on the chipped ceramic, Anakin doesn’t really look drunk. He looks deeply unhappy, exhausted, and as if he’s conflicted about something. Like he’s nervous. Like he’s preparing himself to say something. To ask for something.

“Obi-Wan?” A beat. “Got any plans for tomorrow?” Anakin doesn’t meet his eyes, keeps his gaze glued to the tea.

“We still have the rest of the meeting to get through today. The Council will let me know. What were you thinking?”

With his right arm hidden in the sleeve of his shirt and the cup of hot tea balanced on his thigh, Anakin is restlessly fiddling with the handle with his non-dominant arm, brushing his fingers over the rim of the cup, doing his utmost to keep his hand occupied, but as Obi-Wan watches him, he just worries he’s going to scald himself.

“Would you… Go with me to the Halls of Healing?” The cup of tea is apparently absolutely riveting, as it doesn’t allow Anakin to look away from it, or so one could assume. “I should get fitted for a prosthetic.”

Obi-Wan tries his hardest to keep the tone of his voice neutral, to not let any emotion slip out aside from maybe the faintest trace of support and encouragement.

“Of course.”

Obi-Wan wonders what Quinlan told him to make him change his mind. He suspects he knows. He must have done the one thing Obi-Wan swore to himself he wouldn’t do. Quinlan probably convinced Anakin to get a prosthetic arm because of the war, that he’d be needed and valuable to the Order, and most importantly, that surely Knighthood now wasn’t far away. It makes Obi-Wan strangely unhappy that this is being used to lure him, but at the same time he knows that if that is what actually happened, then Quinlan is right, and Obi-Wan is not too proud to admit that his own attempts to draw Anakin out of his misery haven’t been working.

Anakin exhales heavily like he dreaded the answer, as if there was ever any possibility that Obi-Wan wouldn’t accompany him. Or maybe he was just apprehensive of bringing up this topic and is relieved to have got it over with.

They sit there a while in silence, but in contrast to the past week, this silence is not unpleasant. It has a sense of hope to it, of life restarting again. The bond between them settles, finds its familiar shape again. Anakin keeps cradling his cup, brushing the ceramic with his thumb, but he doesn’t drink any more. Obi-Wan finishes his tea, and maybe it’s the blend he chose that’s working its wonders, or maybe it’s the fact that they are finally talking again, but either way, he realizes that something all knotted up inside his chest dissipates.

When Obi-Wan gets up and approaches Anakin, intending to take the cups back to the kitchen, he extends his arm and raises an eyebrow in the direction of the cup. Anakin looks up at him, and he holds his gaze for what seems like eternity. There are dark circles under his eyes, the result of many sleepless nights, and the alcohol brought some colour to his cheeks, but what matters is that the worry lines on his forehead caused by his constant frowning are gone. He offers up a faint smile and hands Obi-Wan the still half-full cup.

“Thank you.”

It goes unspoken that it’s not just the tea he’s thanking him for.

Obi-Wan swallows and holds eye contact for a little longer, until he can take it no more, and then he simply nods, accepts the cup and retreats to the kitchen. After he washes up, he fills a glass of water and brings it back to the living room. Anakin has again lied down, curled up on the couch, this time with his back to the backrest and tracking Obi-Wan’s progress through the room with his gaze.

“Right, I need to head back to the Council,” he says as he sets the glass down on the coffee table. “Drink this and go to bed, dear.”

“Can you stay a while longer? Until I fall asleep?” Anakin blinks up at him with his eyes expectant and hopeful, and suddenly he’s not a drunk nineteen-year-old recovering from a traumatic amputation, not wanting to be left alone.

Suddenly, it’s like Anakin’s nine again, just a little boy coming down with a fever, implicitly trusting a near stranger he’s only known for a couple of weeks to look after him; Obi-Wan, plagued by a worry he hasn’t known before, sitting on the edge of the bed and holding a cold compress to his forehead.

Suddenly, it’s like Anakin’s twelve again, returning to the Temple from an unsanctioned solo exploration of the lower Coruscant levels with guilt on his face and his knee scraped to the bone after slipping while being chased by a bunch of street dogs, absolutely positive that Obi-Wan will take care of it.

Suddenly, it’s like Anakin’s sixteen again, and they are being chased by members of a criminal syndicate whose intel they stole, vastly outnumbered, and in a brief clairvoyant moment Obi-Wan shoves Anakin out of harm’s way just in time to himself feel the excruciating slash of pain in his shoulder before he loses consciousness; only to later wake up, weak, in a puddle of his own blood; Anakin kneeling in it, holding him close, cradling his head in his lap, the pounding rain washing the tears from his face, but not managing to mask the lack of heartbeats in the bodies around them; Anakin’s outburst of rage and anguish and devotion a magnificently terrifying thing.

It’s like Anakin’s still, at least for a short while –

– his.

Lying there on his side, Anakin extends his arm out, up, towards him. He never takes his eyes off him. He’s well aware of their power.

As if in a dream, Obi-Wan watches himself grabbing the bundled up blanket from the end of the couch, shaking it out and throwing it over Anakin, then pushing the coffee table aside and sinking down. He sits on the floor with his back to the couch, leans his head back against Anakin’s bony knees, stares at the ceiling for a second, and finally closes his eyes. Raising his arm, he blindly gropes about until his hand finds Anakin’s, hanging over the edge of the couch. Anakin squeezes his fingers, gratefully, and doesn’t let go.

Then, Anakin says something, softly, gently, but it doesn’t seem important. There’s only a faint buzzing in Obi-Wan’s ears.

He will return to the Council meeting after Anakin falls asleep. Tomorrow, they will go to the Halls of Healing to get Anakin a new arm. In the following weeks, the starting war will go on and most likely change everything in ways they cannot yet imagine. Anakin will be knighted and taken away from him, and this place will never again know such sparkling joy, such trust and companionship, and there is nothing Obi-Wan can do about any of it. For now, though, he’s just going to sit here and hold Anakin’s hand. He’s going to sit here on the cold hard floor, with his head leaning on Anakin’s knee uncomfortably and his neck slowly going stiff, with his arm raised up and already starting to tingle, well on its way to going numb. He’s suffered worse, for Anakin.

He’d do all of it again, and more, if he asked.

~

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of losing an arm – and then what?