Seas of Sand
Tittle: Seas of Sand
Fandom: Star Wars (canon)
Rating: PG-13, maybe? Probably less, actually, I don't think there's anything that would rise it up.
Warnings: Nothing that I can think of.
Summary: The nights of Tatooine are always, always cold. (Not as cold as he is, though. Never as cold as he is.) My take on Obi-Wan's years in exile.
Disclaimer: Star Wars belongs to its rightful owners, and I'm in no way associated with them. I just love the story, and practise my writing skills. No profit made.
A/N: Well, it's not going to get any better than it is, so I might as well publish it. Thanks for hakasha, who betaed. Hope you enjoy.
Seas of Sand
***
Picking up the pieces now where to begin
The hardest part of ending is starting again
- Waiting for the end, Linkin Park
***
As hot as it gets during daytime, the nights of Tatooine are bone-deep, freezing cold. It’s the same with all desert planets, and the knowledge shouldn’t come as a surprise. Yet it does, and Obi-Wan is left shivering in his too thin blankets the first night he spends in the Jundland Wastes.
(How could Anakin be so unused to coldness? He never mentioned what the nights of Tatooine were like, never complained about them.)
He doesn’t sleep that night, nor the following one. On the third day Obi-Wan only falls asleep because his body is too exhausted to keep going and even then he only gets a few hours before he wakes up in cold sweat, refusing to acknowledge the shaking of his hands or the burning in his eyes.
(Pretends he doesn’t hear Anakin’s screams in his head.)
Dreams pass in time, Obi-Wan tries to tell himself but it doesn’t work, and he is left feeling like he will choke on the dry desert air (or maybe the emotions he can no longer control).
(After all, these are not dreams, and memories aren’t wiped away that easily.)
Forgive me, he thinks, not knowing who he is talking to.
***
The hut is small and half-filled with sand, abandoned so long ago that hardly a trace of its former owner’s Force-presence remains in the rocks by the time Obi-Wan finds it. There’s a broken bowl lying on the floor next to a counter hacked in solid stone and a piece of metal in one corner and nothing more.
Somehow, the place feels fitting.
It takes time, but eventually the hut starts looking less like an interestingly shaped cave and more like a residence with an inhabitant. It’s far from perfect, or even comfortable, and it offers little protection against the heat and even less against the chill, but in a way it feels almost like a… home. Or as close to a home as he’s ever going to get.
(A home is where the heart is.)
(You were my brother!)
So Obi-Wan settles down, learns how life is lived on Tatooine, and gets by as best as he can. It’s not much - it’s never going to be much, he knows - but he doesn’t need it to be. This is a mission - (his last mission) - and quite possibly the most important thing he will ever do in his life, and he only needs it to be enough.
He’s still a Jedi, and he’ll do his duty.
(He won’t fail again. He won’t. He can’t.)
He’s a Jedi.
(It’s also more than a mission, more than a duty, and maybe - maybe - that is what makes it enough, in the end.)
***
The fires of Mustafar flash behind his eyes and Yoda’s words repeat themselves in his head, over and over again. He can’t stop them and he doesn’t know if he even wants to. It’s all he has left of his life, of his family -
(- of his brother.)
(Gone, the boy you trained is.)
(There’s still good in him.)
He sees Anakin like he was on Mustafar, red-eyed and coiling with darkness, face twisted in pain and anger as he lies on the molten sand. He sees him like he was when they first met, a nine-year-old slave boy, maybe not happy or innocent, but a child, with hopes and dreams (and no malice or the burdens of a war). Sees him on the landing pad right before he leaves to Utapau (the last time things are still as they should, the last time he sees him before the world ends). Sees the boy, the padawan, the man, the hero, the Sith, the Jedi -
(Children, dead at his feet.
A security footage.
No, please, no.)
Words of betrayal and hatred (and -
(Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.)
- pain) ring in his ears as Anakin’s eyes (red, yellow, blue) stare at him from his memories, and fear grips him. His throat closes (like Anakin would’ve been strangling him), choking down a - a sob, a cry, he doesn’t know.
(Gone, the boy you trained is.)
Anakin couldn’t have done that, he remembers thinking, mostly because he’s still thinking it. Anakin couldn’t have killed them. It couldn’t have been him. Not Anakin. He wouldn’t, no, never. Anakin wouldn’t (right?).
But he saw it himself. He saw it. Except -
(Gone, the boy you trained is.)
It wasn’t Anakin, just Anakin’s body, and Anakin - Anakin is dead.
It doesn’t make it better, and it doesn’t heal him or give him back his hope or his shattered faith (heart, love), but it means that Anakin didn’t kill them. It means that he won’t have to kill Anakin. Because Anakin is already dead, and it’s just his body.
(He still can’t kill him. It. His body.)
(Attachment.)
But now, now -
- he remembers, Anakin’s eyes, yellow and red, on Mustafar -
- pain -
(Consumed by Darth Vader.)
(But what if he wasn’t?)
- had he been crying?
Obi-Wan lies in the dark, staring blindly ahead, and feels the coldness of Tatooine’s night seep so deep into his bones that even the twin suns won’t be able to banish it from them.
***
The Wastes are dead, empty and silent.
In a way, Obi-Wan is glad for that. Here in these barren wastelands he is alone and isolated, his only companion the never ceasing wind, and that in itself is a relief. He doesn’t think he could take it if he had to see life lived around him as if nothing had happened. Half of the time he feels as though having to live just his own life will kill him. (Maybe it already has?)
He can’t die, though. He’s a Jedi and he has a duty. He can’t die, so he keeps away from other people as much as he can, only visiting Mos Eisley when he has to get supplies in order to survive.
(He tries not to think on the times when he can’t stop himself from entertaining the thought of just not going.)
The solitude comes with a price, though, and Obi-Wan knows this. With nothing to do for the most of day and night, his thoughts are left free to wander and all too often they travel to places he would rather not look into (yet can’t help but).
(Anakin, Anakin, why? Why?)
(The jedi are evil.)
(There’s still good in him.)
Usually, he lies still on his uncomfortable bed in the depth of night (or the blistering heat of afternoon) and stares into nothingness, trying in vain to pinpoint the exact moment where things went irrevocably and conclusively wrong. What he did, where he erred so disastrously as to bring about the end of the Jedi, the Republic, Anakin. (Because surely the fault is his. If only he’d been a better master, better Jedi, better friend, all of it could have been avoided.)
Sometimes he wonders if there was any such particular moment at all, if maybe it had built up over the years, slowly and steadily. Some continuous and perpetual failing in his teachings he hadn’t seen, hadn’t realized was undermining Anakin’s training, his morals, his faith in the Force.
(Or, most horrifyingly, what if it could never have been avoided? What if it was what Anakin was meant to do from the very beginning? The real will of the Force?
After all, isn’t everything that happens the will of the Force?)
At times he almost thinks his nightmares are easier to face than the waking world.
***
Obi-Wan takes to visiting Luke whenever he has nothing else to do, partly because watching after the boy is his duty but mostly just to distract himself from the darker roads of thought. Something about the way Anakin’s son calms the Force with a steady, almost indistinguishable glow, eases the chaos his mind is in, giving him the barest modicum of peace.
(It’s the most he thinks he’ll ever have.)
Of course, his visits can only be called that if standing just within eye-sight of the farm’s compound is visiting someone. But Obi-Wan doesn’t dare to get closer, and not just because Owen Lars is far from being fond of him.
(He can’t fail Luke, too. He owes this to Anakin.)
Fortunately, it seems that whatever Owen has against him (or the Jedi), it doesn’t reflect on Luke, and somehow that simple fact manages to lighten the burdens weighting him down just a little. Because even if Anakin’s son may not have an easy upbringing, he’ll have a family that loves him and takes care of him (and isn’t afraid to say so when he needs to hear it), and that is more than he could’ve ever given Luke.
(Could ever give Anakin.)
(Forgive me.)
***
Qui-Gon comes to him eight months after he arrives on Tatooine, and it’s only when Obi-Wan sees the transparently blue form of his old master and feels something akin to both relief and fear that he realizes he hasn’t quite dared to believe Master Yoda.
(He doesn’t ask why Qui-Gon didn’t come earlier.)
***
So Obi-Wan becomes a student, and once again he has someone to talk to, someone to ask for advice - someone who admonishes him whenever he can’t bring himself to meditate quite as often as would be desirable, or falls into desperation, or acts in a manner unbefitting of a Jedi. (Which all happen far more often than they have for nearly two decades. Far more often than they should.)
But as good as it is to see Qui-Gon again, Obi-Wan doesn’t really know how he feels about the whole situation. Half of him is happy, relieved to have Qui-Gon there again, even as the other half finds his presence awkward and strange, nothing like the way it used to be. Somewhere along the years something changed, and now things just aren’t the same anymore. His master’s calm and steady presence doesn’t soothe him anymore, and Qui-Gon’s words give him no peace. Where there used to be solid certainty, is now only memories and wishes.
Obi-Wan doesn’t understand the shift at first, and when he finally does, he’s left feeling empty and helpless. (He doesn’t want to lose this too like he has lost all else.) Because it’s not them that has changed, it’s him.
He’s a student again, yes, but he’s a man too. He’s been a knight and a master, a soldier and a general, and he is not the same person he was when Qui-Gon died. The years (the war) have changed him, whether it be for the better or for the worse (he does not know), and that man, that person, can find no refuge in Qui-Gon’s words, no matter how wise or true they are.
That man feels cold even under the merciless twin suns of Tatooine.
Obi-Wan tries not to let it show, tries to act as though everything is well (it’s not) because he doesn’t want to explain it to his master, doesn’t want to see the look he knows Qui-Gon would give him (disappointment). Sometimes it’s even relatively easy. Just forget, let go, yield, like he has done all his life, and in front of Qui-Gon he somehow finds the strength to be a Jedi again.
The nights, however, are a different matter. Then, alone with himself and his own regrets, Obi-Wan can’t quite find the will to pretend that he is alright and that the coldness isn’t there in his bones and veins and heart. Besides, a Jedi is not supposed to lie, so the least he can do is not to lie to himself.
(And he knows in his heart that nothing will ever really make the coldness go away.)
(Sometimes he thinks that nothing should.)
There are times though, when he catches the other Jedi watching him with sadness and sympathy that he thinks Qui-Gon must already know.
***
Even in his less than ideal state of mind Obi-Wan doesn’t find the teachings of the Whills overly difficult. It’s not to say they are easy - far from it - but learning them isn’t something he thinks he’s completely incapable of doing, given time and practice.
Unlike forgetting Anakin seems to be.
He can sit hours in meditation (or just still on the sand) and release his emotions and regrets (and memories) into the Force - and then release them again and again and again. It never works for more than a minute or two, if even that. More often than not Obi-Wan just ends up replaying his life in his head, helplessly wishing he could get a hold of himself as he once again tries and fails not to remember Anakin’s face.
(Because really? He doesn’t want to forget.)
He knows it’s not the Jedi way to dwell in the past and think about “what ifs” and “maybes”. He shouldn’t cling to the memories of his failures and mistakes. He shouldn’t want to remember. He should let go and move on, do what was required of him as a Jedi, and let Anakin rest in peace.
Obi-Wan knows all this, knows it in his very being and yet - he can’t.
It’s not as though he doesn’t try, because he does. Time and time again, he lets go of his regrets and doubts and pain, and every time they return, trickling back in little by little until he’s right back where he was before he released them. It’s an endless circle, one he can’t stop, and although it becomes almost… an easy routine as more and more time passes, he still can’t break away from it.
(Doesn’t want to, if he’s honest with himself.)
***
Sometimes, when the night is even colder than usual and his blankets aren’t enough to keep his body warm and he can’t sleep, Obi-Wan leaves his hut and goes to the edge of the Jundland Wastes to watch the Dune Sea.
There’s nothing to see there, really, just sand after sand after sand, moving ever so slowly in the desert wind under the always clear sky. Unlike with an actual sea, you can’t even watch the waves hit the shore as the dunes take days, weeks, months to travel past the landscape and reach the first rocks of the Wastes.
Nevertheless, Obi-Wan goes there, and watches the silent expanse of sand and the stars and the black horizon until the finest shade of light turns it into dark blue, and then he leaves before the suns rise.
***
He isn’t sure when exactly he stops being Obi-Wan, the Jedi Master and General in the Grand Army of the Republic, the Negotiator and another half of The Team, former - and present - student to Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jin, and becomes Ben, the crazy hermit living in the Wastes, enemy of the Empire and a Jedi in exile, the failed master to the Chosen One and the guardian of his son. The one just slowly merges into the other, and one day he wakes up to find out -
- he’s an old man.
That, he supposes, is the moment he more or less realizes (accepts) that he isn’t just a Jedi anymore. The years spent on this planet of fates still in the making have made him into something else - something less, something more, though maybe not something he wasn’t before, he doesn’t really know - and he finds that oddly, he doesn’t regret it. He doesn’t need to be a Jedi, not anymore -
- because somehow, what’s left outside of the Jedi is enough.
(He doesn’t even notice it when the nightmares stop being nightmares and become just dreams.)
That morning Obi-Wan sits watching the two lightsabers for a long time, thoughts and memories going around in circles in his head as he traces the other one gently with his fingers. Eventually, he gets up and places the two weapons back inside the box that holds everything material he has left of his past. Then he leaves to his monthly supply trip. Somewhere in the wastelands a krayt dragon cries.
Anakin would’ve wanted Luke to have his saber.
***
Maybe it’s the suns or the sand or the way there’s no future to be found on the deserts, but sometimes time seems almost different on Tatooine. Like it doesn’t even exist, or exists just barely so that its hold on chronology is tenuous at best, letting the days bleed into others haphazardly and blurring the lines of weeks, months, years. Even Obi-Wan can’t always keep a track of what day it is, and he’s always had an impeccable sense of time.
(Not that it really matters here.)
Usually, it doesn’t bother him, but at times, when it seems like there’s an invisible wall, abysmal chasm somewhere between his past life and his present that separates the two from each other irrevocably, he feels as though he’s been living in his small hut forever. Everything outside of the barren rocks of the Wastes seem to become little more than a dream, a lost world he can no longer reach, and it’s just the desert and an aging man with only his memories to keep him company.
Those times Obi-Wan feels more alone than he has done any other time in his life. Sometimes it’s even enough to drive him to the outskirts of the Lars farm to watch (remember) Luke (Anakin) from the distance, until he can grasp a hold of all the reasons why he is there, again. Usually he just remembers the better days - and what an irony it is that the Clone Wars is now part of those “better days” - when things were still right even if not always well.
(When he still had his brother.)
Somewhere along the way he learns not to fault himself for remembering.
***
In the end, Obi-Wan never notices it happening, but as his long exile finally comes to its end, the pain just isn’t there anymore. Time, it seems, healed what nothing else could, and so when Vader (Anakin) reaches him upon the Death Star, Obi-Wan is ready. He knows this is his end, and doesn’t bother fighting it. He just rises his blade and smiles.
(There’s still good in him.)
He will always regret the things that went wrong between them. It’s a burden he will carry with himself for as long as he exists. And that’s alright. He doesn’t need to forget, because he can forgive.
(And maybe, just maybe, he can give Anakin a second chance. Even if it takes some creative use of the infamous point of view his old padawan was never particularly fond of. But that’s alright too, because he knows that unlike Anakin, Luke will be able to handle it.
He might even forgive him one day. If it works out.)
Obi-Wan has his peace.
A few years later, he has his brother too.
Fandom: Star Wars (canon)
Rating: PG-13, maybe? Probably less, actually, I don't think there's anything that would rise it up.
Warnings: Nothing that I can think of.
Summary: The nights of Tatooine are always, always cold. (Not as cold as he is, though. Never as cold as he is.) My take on Obi-Wan's years in exile.
Disclaimer: Star Wars belongs to its rightful owners, and I'm in no way associated with them. I just love the story, and practise my writing skills. No profit made.
A/N: Well, it's not going to get any better than it is, so I might as well publish it. Thanks for hakasha, who betaed. Hope you enjoy.
Seas of Sand
***
Picking up the pieces now where to begin
The hardest part of ending is starting again
- Waiting for the end, Linkin Park
***
As hot as it gets during daytime, the nights of Tatooine are bone-deep, freezing cold. It’s the same with all desert planets, and the knowledge shouldn’t come as a surprise. Yet it does, and Obi-Wan is left shivering in his too thin blankets the first night he spends in the Jundland Wastes.
(How could Anakin be so unused to coldness? He never mentioned what the nights of Tatooine were like, never complained about them.)
He doesn’t sleep that night, nor the following one. On the third day Obi-Wan only falls asleep because his body is too exhausted to keep going and even then he only gets a few hours before he wakes up in cold sweat, refusing to acknowledge the shaking of his hands or the burning in his eyes.
(Pretends he doesn’t hear Anakin’s screams in his head.)
Dreams pass in time, Obi-Wan tries to tell himself but it doesn’t work, and he is left feeling like he will choke on the dry desert air (or maybe the emotions he can no longer control).
(After all, these are not dreams, and memories aren’t wiped away that easily.)
Forgive me, he thinks, not knowing who he is talking to.
***
The hut is small and half-filled with sand, abandoned so long ago that hardly a trace of its former owner’s Force-presence remains in the rocks by the time Obi-Wan finds it. There’s a broken bowl lying on the floor next to a counter hacked in solid stone and a piece of metal in one corner and nothing more.
Somehow, the place feels fitting.
It takes time, but eventually the hut starts looking less like an interestingly shaped cave and more like a residence with an inhabitant. It’s far from perfect, or even comfortable, and it offers little protection against the heat and even less against the chill, but in a way it feels almost like a… home. Or as close to a home as he’s ever going to get.
(A home is where the heart is.)
(You were my brother!)
So Obi-Wan settles down, learns how life is lived on Tatooine, and gets by as best as he can. It’s not much - it’s never going to be much, he knows - but he doesn’t need it to be. This is a mission - (his last mission) - and quite possibly the most important thing he will ever do in his life, and he only needs it to be enough.
He’s still a Jedi, and he’ll do his duty.
(He won’t fail again. He won’t. He can’t.)
He’s a Jedi.
(It’s also more than a mission, more than a duty, and maybe - maybe - that is what makes it enough, in the end.)
***
The fires of Mustafar flash behind his eyes and Yoda’s words repeat themselves in his head, over and over again. He can’t stop them and he doesn’t know if he even wants to. It’s all he has left of his life, of his family -
(- of his brother.)
(Gone, the boy you trained is.)
(There’s still good in him.)
He sees Anakin like he was on Mustafar, red-eyed and coiling with darkness, face twisted in pain and anger as he lies on the molten sand. He sees him like he was when they first met, a nine-year-old slave boy, maybe not happy or innocent, but a child, with hopes and dreams (and no malice or the burdens of a war). Sees him on the landing pad right before he leaves to Utapau (the last time things are still as they should, the last time he sees him before the world ends). Sees the boy, the padawan, the man, the hero, the Sith, the Jedi -
(Children, dead at his feet.
A security footage.
No, please, no.)
Words of betrayal and hatred (and -
(Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.)
- pain) ring in his ears as Anakin’s eyes (red, yellow, blue) stare at him from his memories, and fear grips him. His throat closes (like Anakin would’ve been strangling him), choking down a - a sob, a cry, he doesn’t know.
(Gone, the boy you trained is.)
Anakin couldn’t have done that, he remembers thinking, mostly because he’s still thinking it. Anakin couldn’t have killed them. It couldn’t have been him. Not Anakin. He wouldn’t, no, never. Anakin wouldn’t (right?).
But he saw it himself. He saw it. Except -
(Gone, the boy you trained is.)
It wasn’t Anakin, just Anakin’s body, and Anakin - Anakin is dead.
It doesn’t make it better, and it doesn’t heal him or give him back his hope or his shattered faith (heart, love), but it means that Anakin didn’t kill them. It means that he won’t have to kill Anakin. Because Anakin is already dead, and it’s just his body.
(He still can’t kill him. It. His body.)
(Attachment.)
But now, now -
- he remembers, Anakin’s eyes, yellow and red, on Mustafar -
- pain -
(Consumed by Darth Vader.)
(But what if he wasn’t?)
- had he been crying?
Obi-Wan lies in the dark, staring blindly ahead, and feels the coldness of Tatooine’s night seep so deep into his bones that even the twin suns won’t be able to banish it from them.
***
The Wastes are dead, empty and silent.
In a way, Obi-Wan is glad for that. Here in these barren wastelands he is alone and isolated, his only companion the never ceasing wind, and that in itself is a relief. He doesn’t think he could take it if he had to see life lived around him as if nothing had happened. Half of the time he feels as though having to live just his own life will kill him. (Maybe it already has?)
He can’t die, though. He’s a Jedi and he has a duty. He can’t die, so he keeps away from other people as much as he can, only visiting Mos Eisley when he has to get supplies in order to survive.
(He tries not to think on the times when he can’t stop himself from entertaining the thought of just not going.)
The solitude comes with a price, though, and Obi-Wan knows this. With nothing to do for the most of day and night, his thoughts are left free to wander and all too often they travel to places he would rather not look into (yet can’t help but).
(Anakin, Anakin, why? Why?)
(The jedi are evil.)
(There’s still good in him.)
Usually, he lies still on his uncomfortable bed in the depth of night (or the blistering heat of afternoon) and stares into nothingness, trying in vain to pinpoint the exact moment where things went irrevocably and conclusively wrong. What he did, where he erred so disastrously as to bring about the end of the Jedi, the Republic, Anakin. (Because surely the fault is his. If only he’d been a better master, better Jedi, better friend, all of it could have been avoided.)
Sometimes he wonders if there was any such particular moment at all, if maybe it had built up over the years, slowly and steadily. Some continuous and perpetual failing in his teachings he hadn’t seen, hadn’t realized was undermining Anakin’s training, his morals, his faith in the Force.
(Or, most horrifyingly, what if it could never have been avoided? What if it was what Anakin was meant to do from the very beginning? The real will of the Force?
After all, isn’t everything that happens the will of the Force?)
At times he almost thinks his nightmares are easier to face than the waking world.
***
Obi-Wan takes to visiting Luke whenever he has nothing else to do, partly because watching after the boy is his duty but mostly just to distract himself from the darker roads of thought. Something about the way Anakin’s son calms the Force with a steady, almost indistinguishable glow, eases the chaos his mind is in, giving him the barest modicum of peace.
(It’s the most he thinks he’ll ever have.)
Of course, his visits can only be called that if standing just within eye-sight of the farm’s compound is visiting someone. But Obi-Wan doesn’t dare to get closer, and not just because Owen Lars is far from being fond of him.
(He can’t fail Luke, too. He owes this to Anakin.)
Fortunately, it seems that whatever Owen has against him (or the Jedi), it doesn’t reflect on Luke, and somehow that simple fact manages to lighten the burdens weighting him down just a little. Because even if Anakin’s son may not have an easy upbringing, he’ll have a family that loves him and takes care of him (and isn’t afraid to say so when he needs to hear it), and that is more than he could’ve ever given Luke.
(Could ever give Anakin.)
(Forgive me.)
***
Qui-Gon comes to him eight months after he arrives on Tatooine, and it’s only when Obi-Wan sees the transparently blue form of his old master and feels something akin to both relief and fear that he realizes he hasn’t quite dared to believe Master Yoda.
(He doesn’t ask why Qui-Gon didn’t come earlier.)
***
So Obi-Wan becomes a student, and once again he has someone to talk to, someone to ask for advice - someone who admonishes him whenever he can’t bring himself to meditate quite as often as would be desirable, or falls into desperation, or acts in a manner unbefitting of a Jedi. (Which all happen far more often than they have for nearly two decades. Far more often than they should.)
But as good as it is to see Qui-Gon again, Obi-Wan doesn’t really know how he feels about the whole situation. Half of him is happy, relieved to have Qui-Gon there again, even as the other half finds his presence awkward and strange, nothing like the way it used to be. Somewhere along the years something changed, and now things just aren’t the same anymore. His master’s calm and steady presence doesn’t soothe him anymore, and Qui-Gon’s words give him no peace. Where there used to be solid certainty, is now only memories and wishes.
Obi-Wan doesn’t understand the shift at first, and when he finally does, he’s left feeling empty and helpless. (He doesn’t want to lose this too like he has lost all else.) Because it’s not them that has changed, it’s him.
He’s a student again, yes, but he’s a man too. He’s been a knight and a master, a soldier and a general, and he is not the same person he was when Qui-Gon died. The years (the war) have changed him, whether it be for the better or for the worse (he does not know), and that man, that person, can find no refuge in Qui-Gon’s words, no matter how wise or true they are.
That man feels cold even under the merciless twin suns of Tatooine.
Obi-Wan tries not to let it show, tries to act as though everything is well (it’s not) because he doesn’t want to explain it to his master, doesn’t want to see the look he knows Qui-Gon would give him (disappointment). Sometimes it’s even relatively easy. Just forget, let go, yield, like he has done all his life, and in front of Qui-Gon he somehow finds the strength to be a Jedi again.
The nights, however, are a different matter. Then, alone with himself and his own regrets, Obi-Wan can’t quite find the will to pretend that he is alright and that the coldness isn’t there in his bones and veins and heart. Besides, a Jedi is not supposed to lie, so the least he can do is not to lie to himself.
(And he knows in his heart that nothing will ever really make the coldness go away.)
(Sometimes he thinks that nothing should.)
There are times though, when he catches the other Jedi watching him with sadness and sympathy that he thinks Qui-Gon must already know.
***
Even in his less than ideal state of mind Obi-Wan doesn’t find the teachings of the Whills overly difficult. It’s not to say they are easy - far from it - but learning them isn’t something he thinks he’s completely incapable of doing, given time and practice.
Unlike forgetting Anakin seems to be.
He can sit hours in meditation (or just still on the sand) and release his emotions and regrets (and memories) into the Force - and then release them again and again and again. It never works for more than a minute or two, if even that. More often than not Obi-Wan just ends up replaying his life in his head, helplessly wishing he could get a hold of himself as he once again tries and fails not to remember Anakin’s face.
(Because really? He doesn’t want to forget.)
He knows it’s not the Jedi way to dwell in the past and think about “what ifs” and “maybes”. He shouldn’t cling to the memories of his failures and mistakes. He shouldn’t want to remember. He should let go and move on, do what was required of him as a Jedi, and let Anakin rest in peace.
Obi-Wan knows all this, knows it in his very being and yet - he can’t.
It’s not as though he doesn’t try, because he does. Time and time again, he lets go of his regrets and doubts and pain, and every time they return, trickling back in little by little until he’s right back where he was before he released them. It’s an endless circle, one he can’t stop, and although it becomes almost… an easy routine as more and more time passes, he still can’t break away from it.
(Doesn’t want to, if he’s honest with himself.)
***
Sometimes, when the night is even colder than usual and his blankets aren’t enough to keep his body warm and he can’t sleep, Obi-Wan leaves his hut and goes to the edge of the Jundland Wastes to watch the Dune Sea.
There’s nothing to see there, really, just sand after sand after sand, moving ever so slowly in the desert wind under the always clear sky. Unlike with an actual sea, you can’t even watch the waves hit the shore as the dunes take days, weeks, months to travel past the landscape and reach the first rocks of the Wastes.
Nevertheless, Obi-Wan goes there, and watches the silent expanse of sand and the stars and the black horizon until the finest shade of light turns it into dark blue, and then he leaves before the suns rise.
***
He isn’t sure when exactly he stops being Obi-Wan, the Jedi Master and General in the Grand Army of the Republic, the Negotiator and another half of The Team, former - and present - student to Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jin, and becomes Ben, the crazy hermit living in the Wastes, enemy of the Empire and a Jedi in exile, the failed master to the Chosen One and the guardian of his son. The one just slowly merges into the other, and one day he wakes up to find out -
- he’s an old man.
That, he supposes, is the moment he more or less realizes (accepts) that he isn’t just a Jedi anymore. The years spent on this planet of fates still in the making have made him into something else - something less, something more, though maybe not something he wasn’t before, he doesn’t really know - and he finds that oddly, he doesn’t regret it. He doesn’t need to be a Jedi, not anymore -
- because somehow, what’s left outside of the Jedi is enough.
(He doesn’t even notice it when the nightmares stop being nightmares and become just dreams.)
That morning Obi-Wan sits watching the two lightsabers for a long time, thoughts and memories going around in circles in his head as he traces the other one gently with his fingers. Eventually, he gets up and places the two weapons back inside the box that holds everything material he has left of his past. Then he leaves to his monthly supply trip. Somewhere in the wastelands a krayt dragon cries.
Anakin would’ve wanted Luke to have his saber.
***
Maybe it’s the suns or the sand or the way there’s no future to be found on the deserts, but sometimes time seems almost different on Tatooine. Like it doesn’t even exist, or exists just barely so that its hold on chronology is tenuous at best, letting the days bleed into others haphazardly and blurring the lines of weeks, months, years. Even Obi-Wan can’t always keep a track of what day it is, and he’s always had an impeccable sense of time.
(Not that it really matters here.)
Usually, it doesn’t bother him, but at times, when it seems like there’s an invisible wall, abysmal chasm somewhere between his past life and his present that separates the two from each other irrevocably, he feels as though he’s been living in his small hut forever. Everything outside of the barren rocks of the Wastes seem to become little more than a dream, a lost world he can no longer reach, and it’s just the desert and an aging man with only his memories to keep him company.
Those times Obi-Wan feels more alone than he has done any other time in his life. Sometimes it’s even enough to drive him to the outskirts of the Lars farm to watch (remember) Luke (Anakin) from the distance, until he can grasp a hold of all the reasons why he is there, again. Usually he just remembers the better days - and what an irony it is that the Clone Wars is now part of those “better days” - when things were still right even if not always well.
(When he still had his brother.)
Somewhere along the way he learns not to fault himself for remembering.
***
In the end, Obi-Wan never notices it happening, but as his long exile finally comes to its end, the pain just isn’t there anymore. Time, it seems, healed what nothing else could, and so when Vader (Anakin) reaches him upon the Death Star, Obi-Wan is ready. He knows this is his end, and doesn’t bother fighting it. He just rises his blade and smiles.
(There’s still good in him.)
He will always regret the things that went wrong between them. It’s a burden he will carry with himself for as long as he exists. And that’s alright. He doesn’t need to forget, because he can forgive.
(And maybe, just maybe, he can give Anakin a second chance. Even if it takes some creative use of the infamous point of view his old padawan was never particularly fond of. But that’s alright too, because he knows that unlike Anakin, Luke will be able to handle it.
He might even forgive him one day. If it works out.)
Obi-Wan has his peace.
A few years later, he has his brother too.