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That first night in the Temple, when Obi-Wan’s entire galaxy had been turned upside down in a matter of days and the pieces had yet to rearrange themselves, Anakin had come to him.
It was to be expected, really. Obi-Wan’s galaxy may have been turned upside down, but it was nothing compared to what had happened to the boy. Taken from everything he knew, thrown right into a conflict and then losing the one person important to him before being coldly dismissed by the entire Council.
Obi-Wan had not been able to keep quiet. He had barely recovered from feeling rejected by his own Master. Qui-Gon’s insistence that he was ready should have been flattering. Perhaps it would have been, had the situation turned out different. Still, he had promised to train the boy, and so he would, with approval or not.
Approval had been given, reluctantly, and so they had found themselves in quarters in the Temple. New ones, not the ones he’d shared with Qui-Gon. At the time, he had felt just as unmoored as Anakin, just as lost, so he had been grateful for the blank quarters. A fresh start, or at least, an allowance to pretend it was. Releasing his feelings into the Force had never felt more difficult.
He had to be a Master to this lost boy just as Qui-Gon had been to him, no matter what, though.
So when Anakin had come in deep in the night, shivering and clearly trying not to cry, Obi-Wan had moved the covers aside and had invited him in. It had felt odd, wrong in a way Obi-Wan had not quite been able to name. Not wrong in the sense that it was inappropriate, rather wrong in a way that felt the Council would disapprove, if they knew.
But they hadn’t known, and Anakin’s shivering had stopped, and his head had been a heavy weight on Obi-Wan’s shoulder that had been strangely soothing.
He hadn’t even needed to meditate.
It had become a habit quite quickly, and that initial feeling of wrongness had passed very quickly. How could it be against the Jedi way, really, to comfort a lost young boy?
And, if he were honest, it worked to comfort himself. He knew that fear and anger were a path to the Dark Side. He had tried to meditate, he really had. But he simply had not known how to meditate away the weight of responsibility. He fully believed in Qui-Gon’s assessment of the boy, but the fact was he had been raised by his mother rather than in the Temple, and it had made a difference.
Whether it had been a good or a bad difference, Obi-Wan couldn’t tell at the time. Perhaps he still couldn’t, not after everything, not after his own part in it.
They’d both grown into their roles. Not without its struggles, but at least those seemed to be the normal struggles one could expect from a boy turning into a man. Obi-Wan had expected Anakin to start shutting him out - Force knew he had done so with Qui-Gon - but it never happened.
Not at first.
At night, when darkness softened everything, Anakin would still come to him to talk. Not every night anymore, but certainly after a hard mission, or after a dream. The dreams had been difficult, and Obi-Wan hadn’t known how to help Anakin with them. He had tried, at first, to suggest meditation.
Anakin had scoffed at him.
He had been correct to do so.
Because sometimes, Obi-Wan also dreamt. In those dreams, he saw a flash of a bright red lightsaber and Qui-Gon’s surprised face.
No amount of releasing feelings into the Force would solve that.
So they talked. As Anakin grew taller and taller, the bed had felt smaller, but it had never been awkward or cramped. They had fit together.
Obi-Wan had never been able to say when things had started to change. That first time had been the good change. It had happened some months before Geonosis. The signs had been there before, in hindsight. Obi-Wan had not wanted to acknowledge them. They had settled into their roles as Master and Padawan, Anakin seemed to be thriving, there were rules to this sort of thing.
So he had ignored the way Anakin’s eyes lingered on him. He had ignored the way Anakin seemed to press himself closer and closer. He had even ignored the very present hardness poking him in the thigh in the early mornings. A very normal and natural reaction.
Ignoring the spark he himself felt at it had been difficult, but he had forced himself to. A lifetime spent in the Temple; a lifetime practise in suppressing feelings.
That had never been Anakin’s strong point.
The first kiss had been clumsy in its desperation. Obi-Wan had been too stunned to respond, and for a moment, Anakin had looked like that little boy again that had felt rejected by the whole galaxy.
Obi-Wan had kissed him back, equally clumsy and equally desperate.
They hadn’t talked about it. Perhaps they should have done so, but neither man had had the words for what exactly it was they were feeling. How does one name the one thing your whole education has told you is forbidden? Obi-Wan doesn’t know, not even now.
He did know he wanted it, possibly as badly as Anakin did. Rex had caught them, once, and Obi-Wan had wanted to explain. Rex and Anakin had both laughed, and that had been that. They were in a war, there was no time to dwell on such things.
That war had seen them work apart from one another more and more often. Obi-Wan would always tell himself it was for the best, Anakin was a fine Jedi Knight, and he did believe this…affection to be an issue that could and would cloud his judgment.
He did not really believe that. Not when he could clutch Anakin and feel Anakin clutch him in return after missions spent apart. Not when they shared a single breath between them as they moved as one in the still far too small bed in their Temple quarters.
That last night in the Temple, even if he had not known it to be the last one, when Obi-Wan’s entire galaxy was about to be turned upside down in a matter of days, Anakin had not come to him.
That had been unexpected. They may have had their differences, but Anakin had always come to him, had always trusted him with his inner thoughts even when their talks grew less frequent. Obi-Wan liked to think he had never let him down on that.
Now, he knows better.
He had let Anakin down in many ways and he regretted each and every one.
But the worst of all, the one thing he could never recover from, was the fact he had everything that had made the two of them a them down.
I’m sorry Anakin.
For all of it.
The words are ash in his mouth.