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Something happens to Obi-wan, sitting beside Leia in the cabin of the cargo ship they used to escape.
For his whole life, the Order has preached emptiness as the road to power. That has been the teaching of the Jedi. To be still. To be unattached. To cultivate the mind like clear and empty water. To hold back pain, to hold back love. It hasn’t always been easy, but he’s always tried. More than ever, in his solitude since Anakin, he’s tried.
In these past few weeks, it has felt impossible. It’s left him weak. Leia sees it. But when she lays her tiny young hand on his wrinkled old one, with no other desire to comfort him… he doesn’t feel weak.
He feels stronger than he ever has.
He knows, at that moment, what must come to pass. He knows how he will face Anakin. Not how he will beat Anakin, because he doesn’t know if he will. As love fills his heart for Leia, for this child that he has held as she took her first breath, he feels the Force moving through him like a current running deep in the ocean.
There is no good. No evil. No Jedi, no Sith. No light, and no darkness. There is only the texture and the flow of the Universe, and his small place within it, if he has the courage to follow it.
--
He meets Anakin, in the body of Vader, alone in the desert. The only light comes from Beau and Owen’s homestead, far away on the horizon. The boy sleeps, as do his parents.
Vader gloats, his mechanical vocal cords grinding low and horrible in the silence. “Reva told me all. I know your secrets now, Obi-wan. The darkness sees everything. Did you really think you could hide the children from me forever? Train a new order?”
The Sith ignites his saber, and the glowing red light illuminates the hard lines of Anakin’s new body. It is a curse, that body, and one that Obi-wan inflicted on him. A prison. It hurts to see his friend like this. It is, perhaps, the worst pain he has ever known, and it is the first he allows himself to feel in full.
Tears run freely down his cheeks as his own lightsaber crackles to life, and he’s sure Vader can see them in the new light.
“Your pain has made you weak, old Master. It has clouded your sight.”
His own voice is thick with tears: “You can no longer see anything clearly.”
The clash of their blades illuminates the sand purple beneath their feet, ever-shifting. They both struggle to keep their footing as they fight.
He thinks of Leia and finds strength left in his old bones that he never knew remained there. Finally, they are an evenly-matched pair again. For every blow that Vader makes, Obi-wan has a deflection. For every long year, and for everything that has happened since…. Anakin still fights the same way. It is as familiar to him to fight the other man as it is to walk.
They push each other to the limits. Obi-wan is thrown in the air, and the breath is knocked from his lungs. At some point during the fight, Vader’s helmet is slashed part away, and he can see his old friend’s face through the night and the scar tissue.
Sometime later, when sweat drips from both of their brows, he cuts away the voice box that speaks for Anakin, and the voice he knows so well -- the voice he still hears in his dreams -- speaks on an intermittent short. He weeps again, at that.
But at the end of it all, he is not stronger than Vader.
He is years older now, and his body aches with the passage of time, and with disuse. Vader is half-machine, and his strength has been hardened by the never-ending conflict of the Empire.
In spite of everything, Obi-wan was never going to outfight Vader.
The red saber burns by his neck. On his knees in the sand, he looks up at his old apprentice and finds himself empty-handed.
He is silent. Vader is not. He speaks, voice cracking between machine and man: “Now, finally, comes the time when I end you, Master. I will kill you, and then I will kill the boy Luke. And the other after him. The girl, Leia. And then there will be nothing standing in my way.”
I am one with the force, and the force is in me.
It was once a mantra, once a prayer he has spoken many times. A plea that was never answered.
Now, the Force and all the universe flow through him. Obi-wan looks into the eyes of his old friend -- his best and only friend. He sees them, shining in the red light of the blade that burns at his neck, and sees no mercy in their depth. Not for him.
He feels nothing but love. An aching fondness, and the pain of a loss that can never be made right. “Anakin…”
“I killed Anakin! Do not weep for your friend. Your friend is gone!”
The other man sounds hysterical, frighted beneath his fury. His words mean nothing.
“Anakin, I… I did not love you --”
Vader screams his fury, but Kenobi continues:
“I do love you. I still do, even now. I’ll never stop.”
For a moment after that, he thinks Vader might kill him. The blade comes so near to burning through his neck that it leaves a mark. He thinks Anakin may kill him, and does not fear it. But the blade pulls back, and Anakin stumbles back from him, one hand clutching at the broken pieces of his helmet.
“Stop this!” he screams at Obi-wan. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill the children! I’ll kill them all!”
Obi-wan knows that voice. It is the same screaming hysteria that sometimes gripped Anakin’s voice when he was waking from nightmares, a long time ago, when they slept across from each other in a tent, soldiers in the Clone Wars. It is more the voice of a child than a man. A child who was a slave, a teenager who saw his mom beaten and killed. A man whose mentor failed him, and left him alone in the dark.
It is the hardest thing he has ever had to do to get to his feet, but he does it. It is only with his new strength within him that he is able to see his failure and let it go.
Stumbling to his feet, Obi-wan casts a hand to the moisture farm on the horizon where Luke lies sleeping. “I have failed you, Anakin. But he won’t.”
With all the strength he has. Obi-wan… lets it all go. He lifts his hands from the current of the Universe and no longer tries to influence its flow:
“That is your son. Let him be.”
They never had anyone. Neither of them. No fathers, no brothers. No one to love. No one they were allowed to love. Anakin was everything to him. A son, a brother, even a father at times. A best friend, and more than that. The brightest love in his life. The clearest star in the sky.
Perhaps Vader already knew the child at the Lars homestead was his son. Maybe, Obi-wan thinks now, he did not know fully until this moment. Still standing beside him, Vader's breathing is heaving and labored, but the voice that speaks seems like nothing but Anakin’s, suddenly laid bare: “The twins -- one yet lives?”
“They’re alive, Anakin. They’re safe. Spare them.”
Obi-wan can hardly keep his feet under him. Without thinking, he puts a hand out to steady himself, and it finds purchase in the cold metal mesh of Vader’s shoulder.
Heat from Obi-wan’s hand sinks into the metal. Neither of them moves. “I have a son,” the other man rasps in disbelief and lets his lightsaber go dark. "She... she is still alive, in them."
In the few moments before his eyes adjust to the darkness, the man before Obi-wan is neither Anakin nor Vader. He seems smaller than before. The voice that comes from the darkness is matter-of-fact. “Then I will spare you now. And when Luke is a man, I will face him myself.”
And just like that, Vader turns, walks into the night, and is gone.
--
In the next few weeks, out in the desert, everything is much the same, but subtly different in every way that matters.
Leia returns home, Vader leaves the system, and Obi-wan goes back to his life.
He returns to work at the factory, but instead of keeping his eyes on the task in front of him as before, he speaks to his co-workers. They have names, stories, and their own loves and losses in their lives -- kids back home, animals to feed, aging parents. Pains no more and no less than his own. They joke to make the time go by easier, and he laughs with them sometimes now. They make fun of him for taking a whole year to ask their names.
Back home, sometimes, he’ll have a drink or two with dinner, and even though he knows it cuts the senses, it eases the pain in his joints and his heart, and when he ventures outside after the sun sets, he could swear the stars glow brighter for it.
One of his co-workers puts in a good word unprompted for him, and the Lars family lets him spend time with Luke, now. The first thing out of the kid’s mouth, when they meet is, “My dad says you’re crazy and live out in the wastes.” He laughs at that until his sides are sore, and then agrees with Luke. He doesn’t come around too much, but he can’t help himself from bringing new clothes for the cold season, or the sweets Luke favors from the next town over. An old bachelor like himself doesn’t have much other use for the credits.
His dreams used to keep him from sleep, most nights -- all fire, lava, and Anakin screaming that he hated him. Now, he often sleeps dreamlessly. But sometimes, sometimes, he can still feel the other man’s presence in his sleep. Not angry anymore.
Their connection is tenuous and seems often as thin as a single tread. But he holds it in his heart with all the love and strength he knows. And he knows Anakin is not dead. Not gone forever. Vader did not kill Anakin. Anakin is alive.
It is wrong to leave the future wholly to the children, especially now, when there is more suffering in the galaxy than ever. Obi-wan knows that, if the time ever comes that he is called on again, he will answer with everything that remains of his strength.
But for now, it is enough to buy Luke wool socks at the market when the nights start getting cold. To come around and bring dinner on Sundays for the old lady who works beside him at the factory, who he knows has no family left. To send Leia holograms every few weeks, even though he hates seeing how gray his beard is getting. To let his garden go to seed just to watch a few desert birds come round for the seed. To do whatever small good he can.
He has passed the test, at long last. And although the nights seem dark still, the worst of the danger has already passed.